( cxxxiii ) 



Activities in " spa^'e time." 



I suggest that general activity itself, or the internal 

 conditions which lead to it and influence its varied manifest- 

 ations, may be of great significance and import, that there is 

 in many insects a large part of the life not directed to the 

 functions of nutrition or reproduction, but aifording scope for 

 what may be called their general activities. We find this 

 activity to be exercised for many purposes, and so that there is 

 in the case of many species much more time allowed for it 

 than would be necessary for the primary functions I have 

 named, or is, in fact, devoted to those functions. With 

 many there is a long period of activity, of movement, 

 before they settle down to the business of continuing their 

 species, or to its preparatory courtship, and we can hardly 

 suppose that so widely diffused a habit is of no biological 

 importance. Some species, it is recorded,* refuse to pair until 

 some days after emergence. Many live and disport themselves 

 for days before they settle down, the males often flying about 

 several days before the females appear, t and M. Fabre has told 

 us how a fossorial wasp spends a month among the flowers 

 before she obeys the marvellous parental instincts which his 

 brilliant pages have made famous. 



Sportiveness. 

 How do insects occupy their spare time 1 Part of it in 

 what may be brought under the comprehensive name of 

 "play" or "sportiveness." Lord Avebury | in speaking of 

 ants quotes Huber, Gould, and Bates as to their "exercises," 

 Gould describing them as "amusements" and "sportive," and 

 Forel as saying he is convinced that in the actions he is 

 describing " I'attrait des sexes " could not have been the cause. 



Pugnacity, 



Part of the time is occupied by butterflies in fighting. One 



of their leading characteristics is pugnacity. Not that of the 



bull in asserting his lordship over a herd of cows, or that of 



the essentially solitary insect — it may be one of the Diptera § 



* Tutt's "Practical Hints for Field Lepidopterists," vol. ii, pp. 13, 32. 



t Jb. pp. 82, 113-4. 



X International Science Series, vol. 40. 



§ Scott-Elliott, Trims. Ent. Soc. Lond. 1896, p. 119. 



