THE STINGING HABIT IN WASPS. 221 



larvse and packs tiiem so skilfully that they take up as little 

 room as possible. Finally, she lays her egg in the store of 

 living food, and closes the opening with clay. Then she bo- 

 gins a new tube, and so lays one egg after another. 



"What a wonderful contrivance! What calculation on the 

 part of the animal must have been necessary to discover it! The 

 larvae of the wasp require animal food. Dead food enclosed 

 in the cell would soon putrefy, living active animals would dis- 

 turb the egg, and accordingly the wasp paralyses grubs and 

 packs them like sacks of meal one after another in the cell. 

 How did she arrive at this habit? At the beginning she prob- 

 ably killed larvae by stinging them anywhere, and then placed 

 them in the cell. The bad results of this showed themselves; 

 the larvae putrefied before they could serve as food for the lar- 

 val wasps. In the meantime the mother-wasp discovered that 

 those larvae which she had stung in particular parts of the body 

 were motionless but still alive, and then she concluded that lar- 

 vae stung in this particular way could be kept for a longer 

 time unchanged as living motionless food. It may be suggested 

 that the wasp only paralyzed the larvae in order to cany them 

 more easily; but even if this were the case, she must, since she 

 now invariably acts in this way, have drawn a conclusion by de- 

 ductive reasoning, 



"In this case it is absolutely impossible that the animal has ar- 

 rived at its habit otherwise than by reflection upon the facts of 

 experience." 



Here we have as pretty an account of the habits of wasps as 

 could have been given in a fairy book. One can hardly be 

 expected to take such statements seriously, since it is certain 

 that the writer has no knowledge of the life histories of these 

 insects. 



In "Mental Evolution in Animals" Mr. Eomanes says: 

 "Several species of the Hymenoptera display what I think may 

 be justly deemed the most remarkable instincts in the world. 

 These consist in stinging spiders, insects, and caterpillars in 

 their chief nerve centers, in consequence of which the victima 



