CHAPTER XXVI 



LARVAL SACRIFICE 



Fig. 125; 9-12 



It is strange what a vast array of facts are disclosed 

 through the study of the unintelligent invertebrate. I am 

 thinking particularly of insects, dominant creatures of the 

 earth, into whose life-secrets and lore man, through his 

 wretched span of years may scarce become a trespasser. 

 They are set apart, almost in another world, vastly wise 

 and ruled by an iron discipline that has wrought their 

 world empire of today. My attitude toward the insect is 

 that of a pupil under a great master, who, unable ever to 

 reach the altitude of his mind, must be content to set forth his 

 simplest teachings. No matter where I look, my master is 

 there, a superior being who appears to have risen far above 

 me. From his instinctive throne, he looks down pityingly 

 upon my intelligence, I who must put two and two together 

 and work my poor brain so hard to understand his simplest 

 problems. 



Words fail to tell adequately of what I see in the world 

 of insects. Then again there is much that I fail to under- 

 stand anyway, as a consolation for the missing words, but 

 occasionally I have just a faint glimmer of what is trans- 

 piring before my eyes. Thus I shall skip briefly over the life 

 history of a wasp I call the roach-killer, Podium rufipes 

 (Fabr.), to the subject of this chapter. 



The roach-killer is a solitary mason wasp, who has taken 

 advantage of man's intrusion into her domain. His houses 

 and buildings afford safer quarters for her nest, which orig- 

 inally she cemented to the concave sides of stumps or forest 

 trees. Now she has partly abandoned the old sites for the 

 immovable wooden shutters of tropical civilization, where 



