350 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



tioned to its appetite and its wants, that as soon as the 

 whole is consumed it has no longer need of food ; it clothes 

 itself in a silken cocoon, becomes a pupa, and after a 

 deep sleep of a few days bursts from its cell an active bee. 



No circumstance connected with the storge of insects, 

 is more striking than the herculean and incessant labour 

 which it leads them cheerfully to undergo. Some of 

 these exertions are so disproportionate to the size of the 

 insect, that nothing short of ocular conviction could at- 

 tribute them to such an agent. A wild bee or a Sphex, 

 for instance, will dig a hole in a hard bank of earth 

 some inches deep and five or six times its own size, and 

 labour unremittingly at this arduous undertaking for 

 several days, scarcely allowing itself a moment for eating 

 or repose. It will then occupy as much time in searching 

 for a store of food ; and no sooner is this task finished, 

 than it will set about repeating the process, and before 

 it dies will have completed five or six similar cells or 

 even more. If you would estimate this industry at its 

 proper value, you should reflect what kind of exertion it 

 would require in a man to dig in a few days out of hard 

 clay or sand, with no other tools than his nails and teeth, 

 five or six caverns twenty feet deep and four or five wide 

 for such an undertaking would not be comparatively 

 greater than that of the insects in question. 



Similar laborious exertions are not confined to the bee 

 or Sphex tribe. Several beetles in depositing their eggs 

 exhibit examples of industry equally extraordinary. The 

 common dor or clock (Geotrupes stercorarius], which 

 may be found beneath every heap of dung, digs a deep 

 cylindrical hole, and, carrying down a mass of the dung 

 to the bottom, in it deposits its eggs. And many of the 



