xviii The Life of the Spider 



One cannot mention, even casually, the num- 

 berless industries — nearly all of absorbing inter- 

 est — exercised among the rocks, under the 

 ground, in the walls, on the branches, the grass, 

 the flowers, the fruits and down to the very 

 bodies of the subjects studied; for we sometimes 

 find a treble superposition of parasites, as in 

 the Oil-beetles; and we see the maggot itself, 

 the sinister guest at the last feast of all, feed 

 some thirty brigands with its substance. 



7 

 Among the Hymenoptera, which represent 

 the most intellectual class in the world which 

 we are studying, the building-talents of our 

 wonderful Domestic Bee are certainly equalled, 

 in other orders of architecture, by those of more 

 than one wild and solitary bee and notably 

 by the Megachile, or Leaf-cutter, a little insect 

 which is not all outside show and which, to house 

 its eggs, manufactures honey-pots formed of a 

 multitude of disks and ellipses cut with mathe- 

 matical precision from the leaves of certain 

 trees. For lack of space, I am unable, to my 

 great regret, to quote the beautiful and pellucid 



