CHAPTER III 



LARVAL SACRIFICE 



IT is strange what a vast array of facts are disclosed through the 

 study of the unintelligent invertebrate. I am thinking particu- 

 larly 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 

 problem. 



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

 Then again there is much that I fail to understand anyway, as a 

 consolation for the missing words, but occasionally I have just a faint 

 glimmer of what is transpiring 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 originally she cemented to the con- 

 cave sides of stumps or forest trees. Now she has partly abandoned 

 the old sites for the immovable wooden shutters of tropical civiliza- 



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