INSECTS 



393 



Their nesting habits vary largely according to the species, from 

 cases where no nest at all is formed, to others where burrows, or 

 borings, or earthen cells are made for the purpose. There is an 

 equal amount of variation in the nature of the victims selected. 

 These not only include caterpillars, but also cockroaches, beetles, 

 beetle - grubs, ants, flies, aphides, and spiders. The habits of 

 these interesting forms will be reserved for treatment under the 

 heading of Instinct and Intelligence, but the following general 

 remarks of Sharp (in The Cambridge Natural History] are well 

 worth quoting here: " The habits are carnivorous; the structures 

 formed are not for the benefit of the makers, but are constructed 

 and stored with food for the next generation. Their remarkable 

 habits attracted some attention even 2000 years or more ago, and 

 were to some extent observed by Aristotle. The great variety in 

 the habits of the species, the extreme industry, skill, and self-denial 

 they display in carrying out their voluntary labours, renders them 

 one of the most instructive groups of the animal kingdom. There 

 are no social or gregarious forms, they are true individualists, and 

 their lives and instinct offer many subjects for reflection. Unlike 

 the social Insects they can learn nothing whatever from either 

 example or precept. The skill of each individual is prompted by 

 no imitation. The life is short, the later stages of the individual 

 life are totally different from the earlier: the individuals of one 

 generation only in rare cases see even the commencement of the 

 life of the next; the progeny, for the benefit of which they labour 

 with unsurpassable skill and industry, being unknown to them. 

 Were such a solicitude displayed by ourselves we should connect 

 it with a high sense of duty, and poets and moralists would vie 

 in its laudation. But having dubbed ourselves the higher animals, 

 we ascribe the eagerness of the Solitary Wasp to impulse or instinct, 

 and we exterminate their numerous species from the face of the 

 earth for ever, without even seeking to make a prior acquaintance 

 with them. Meanwhile our economists and moralists devote their 

 volumes to admiration of the progress of the civilization that effects 

 this destruction and tolerates this negligence." 



BEETLES (COLEOPTERA). Although this is the most dominant 

 order of insects, and represented by the largest number of species, 

 our knowledge of the habits of these is comparatively scanty, 

 though at the same time sufficiently numerous observations have 

 been made to render selection of illustrative cases difficult. 



VOL. III. 88 



