238 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 
- characteristic, that we look in vain throughout the whole order Hy- 
menoptera for any other instance * ; while, if we look at the habits 
of the species, we find them to be sufficiently striking to induce us 
-to suppose that we might here find satisfactory cause for such a 
marked peculiarity ; but so far is this from being the case, that whilst 
the typical wasps have an economy as elaborate as that of the hive 
bee, many species are solitary, and resemble the Fossores in their 
habits. To assert that a character like this ought of itself to be con- 
sidered as of primary importance, and of superior weight to other 
structural characters modified by their diversity of economy, would 
be unphilosophical ; and such is the view of the subject taken by St. 
Fargeau (Hist. Nat. Hym. tom. i. p. 474.), who considers that 
although the folding of the wings may be convenient “ pour 
caractériser une famille artificiellement, il ne répond a aucune mo- 
dification. quelconque des mceurs ou habitudes d’agir de plusieurs de 
ces Hyménopteres, puisque leurs différences en cela sont énormes ;” 
these differences consisting, Ist, in the social condition of some of the 
species necessitating two modifications of the female sex (for the pro- 
duction of workers) together with architectonic instincts ; and 2d, in the 
nature of the food of the larve, those of the social species consisting 
almost entirely of a daily supply of vegetable matters, whilst those of 
the solitary species feed upon other insects, stored up for them by the 
female. But it appears to me that in the insects now under con- 
sideration, this character of the folding of the wings indicates a corre- 
spondence in the general structure of the insects possessing these 
different habits, apparently sufficient to prove that the “habitudes 
morales,” of these creatures (with the peculiar modifications of the 
organs which are employed in performing such habits) are not of 
primary importance in regulating the distribution of the order. 
Amongst the Fossores and bees we find species which do not con- 
struct their own nests, but deposit their eggs in the nests of other 
species of those groups; but their larvee devour the same kind of food 
as the insect for whose use it had been stored up, and thus (as 
already insisted upon in pp. 86. and 186.) there is no absolute dif- 
ference between the two groups of insects which possess such 
different habits. In the present family, however, the case is much 
* The identical neuration of the wings (which led Jurine to place all these insects 
in one genus, Vespa), the lunate eyes and the glands at the extremity of the labium, 
may be mentiomed as equally characteristic, and at the same time apparently 
not more influential than the folding of the wings. 
