Chapter XIII 



OUR study of the activities of wasps has satisfied 

 us that it is impracticable to classify them in any 

 simple way. The old notion that the acts of bees, wasps, 

 and ants were all varying forms of instinct is no longer 

 tenable, and must give way to a more philosophical 

 view. It would appear to be quite certain that there 

 are not only instinctive acts but acts of intelligence as 

 well, and a third variety also acts that are probably 

 due to imitation, although whether much or little in- 

 telligence accompanies this imitation is admittedly dif- 

 ficult to determine. Again, acts that are instinctive in 

 one species may be intelligent in another, and we may 

 even assert that there is a considerable variation in 

 the amount of intelligence displayed by different in- 

 dividuals of the same species. We have met with 

 such difficulty in our attempts to arrange the activities 

 of wasps in different groups that we are forced to the 

 conclusion that any scheme of classification is merely 

 a convenience, useful for purposes of study or generali- 



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