362 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOIl THEIR YOUNG. 



and then, like the young of the Surinam toad {Rana 

 pipa), they attach themselves in clusters upon her back, 

 belly, head, and even legs ; and in this situation, where 

 they present a very singular appearance, she carries 

 them about with her and feeds them until their first 

 moult, when they are big enough to provide their own 

 subsistence. I have more than once been gratified by 

 a sight of this interesting spectacle; and when 1 nearly 

 touched the mother, thus covered by hundreds of her 

 progeny, it was most amusing to see them all leap from 

 her back and run away in every direction. 



A similar attachment to their eggs and young is ma- 

 nifested by many other species of the same tribe, parti- 

 cularly of the genera Lycosm and Dolomeda^ Walck. 

 Aranea holosericea, L. {Cliibiona, Walck.) was found 

 by De Geer in her nest with fifty or sixty young ones, 

 when manifesting nothing of her usual timidity, so 

 obstinately did she persist in remaining with them, that 

 to drive her away it was necessary to cut her whole 

 nest in pieces'". 



I must now conduct you to a hasty survey of those 

 insects which live together in societies and fabricate 

 dwellings for the community, such as ants^ rcasps^ bees, 

 htinible-hees^ and lermilcs, whose great object (some- 

 times combined indeed with the storing up of a stock 

 of winter provisions for themselves) is the nutrition 

 and education of their young. Of the proceedings of 

 many of these insects we know comparatively nothing. 

 There are, it is likely, some hundreds of distinct spe- 

 cies of bees which live in societies, and form nests of a 



» Dc Cccr, vii. 26S, 



