860 INSECTS THAT LIVE 
an agreeable temperature, and when they 
are ready to undergo their transforms 
ation, these are the common parents, 
who extricate them from their cocoons, 
taking care of them until they are in a 
condition to fly, or discharge the duties- 
to which they are respectively called. 
In consequence of these attentions to 
them in their infancy, there arises a re- 
ciprocal affection between these insects. 
Hence the nature of the society which we 
observe among them. Thus what prin- 
cipally distinguishes them from those 
insects which live in solitude, is the at- 
tention they bestow upon the educa- 
tion of their young. 
But what a prodigy is that in nature, 
of being able to receive advantage from 
sterility itself, to ensure the preserva- 
tion of the species; of inspiring the 
‘labourers with unbounded affection for 
the offspring of another mother, and 
confiding to them the charge of their 
education. ‘The mother, too fecund to 
crear, unassisted, all her young, finds in 
