356 WASP STUDIES AFIELD 



Peckham. One may safely say, too, that the work of the 

 European naturalists will not greatly exceed this number, 

 and that, approximately, less than 200 species of wasps have 

 anything like a complete report to their credit. When we 

 compare this with the number of known species of Vespidae 

 up to 1894 and Sphegidae to 1897 (fide Dalla Torre's Cata- 

 logus Hymenopterorum), which is approximately 9900, we 

 get an idea of the vast amount of work yet to be done 

 before we dare attempt to construct a synthetic genetic 

 psychology of wasps. 



The social and solitary wasps afford especially fine ma- 

 terial with which to work out such problems as the correla- 

 tion of habit to structure, the origin of socialization among 

 insects, the development of intelligence from instinct, as 

 Whitman would have it, or the independent origins of in- 

 stinct and intelligence, the problem of the inheritance of 

 psychic acquisitions as per Lamarck, the position of natural 

 selection as a factor in preserving and accumulating favor- 

 able variations in behavior, problems of distribution etc. 



Throughout this work the data have given evidence of 

 four very definite attitudes of behavior: 



1. That there are very definite and iron-clad instincts. 



2. That, despite these instincts which are constant in 

 each species, there is much variation in the behavior of 

 the individuals. 



3. That there is a display of the expression of emotions 

 in these creatures. 



4. That, in many instances, there is much aptitude for 

 learning, display of memory, profiting by experience and 

 what seems to us rational conduct. 



Before giving details showing examples of the above 

 four types of behavior, it is well to point out that there are 

 extant two very important interpretations of behavior which 

 these observations clearly do not support. The first is the 



