44 
ants of the possible evolution of the art of storing hquid: food lke 
the bees.¢ 
The position of the brood cells has doubtless had an important 
influence on the evolution possible to the different groups of social 
insects. The brood cells of the kelep are built over the larva as it 
lies on the floor of the chamber. Those of the honeybee are also 
horizontal, though piled, as it were, in double tiers. The cup-lke 
cells of the bumblebees stand erect. 
The instinct of making honeycomb was evidently attained as a 
further step in the practice of constructing permanent brood cells 
in advance of the egg laying. Among insects, as with man himself, 
progress toward civilization has largely come through the accentua- 
tion of parental instincts. 
The underground activities of the keleps are much less extensive 
than those of the ants. The galleries of their nests are simple and 
nearly straight, and the chambers relatively small. There are none 
of the winding passages to which the termites and true ants are so 
partial, and which make the complete investigation of their domestic 
habits so difficult. 
WEEVIL-STINGING WASPS. 
The incredulity with which the report of the weevil-stinging ant 
was received by entomologists shows how completely incongruous 
such a habit appeared when ascribed to an ant. The biological 
anomaly largely disappears, however, with the recognition of the 
fact that the natural relationships of the kelep he with the para- 
sitic wasps rather than with the ants. The stinging of other insects 
by predaceous wasps is an old and familiar fact. It is true that 
most wasps prey upon spiders, caterpillars, flies, cicadas, crickets, 
cockroaches, or even upon bees or ants; but there is one family, the 
Philanthide, which regularly attacks beetles. One of these wasps 
even makes a specialty of beetles of the weevil family. 
The species of the genus Cerceris are numerous in Europe, and several of 
them are known to make burrows in the ground and store them with beetles 
for the benefit of the future larvee. The beetles chosen differ in family acecord- 
ing to the species of Cerceris; but it appears from the observations of Fabre 
and Dufour that one kind of Cerceris never in its selection goes out of the 
limits of a particular family of beetles, but, curiously enough, will take insects 
most dissimilar in form and color provided they belong to the proper family. 
This choice, so wide in one direction and so limited in another, seems to point 
to the existence of some sense, of the nature of which we are unaware, that 
determines the selection made by the insect. In the case of our British species 
a“ Though also making special ‘ honey tubs,’ some of the bumblebees commonly 
use old brood cells for the storage of honey.’—Sharp, David, 1901, Cambridge 
Nat. Hist., Insects, 2: 56. 
