HYMENOPTEBA : HABITS. 377 



the light upon a window. Many of the species live in 

 societies more or less numerous, as the bees, ants, and 

 wasps ; these assemblages consisting of males and females, 

 and neuters, the latter being abortive females, and destined 

 to perform the more laborious duties of the community. 

 Others, as the sand-wasps, &c., are solitary in their 

 habits, but their economy is not less interesting than 

 that of the former ; since, although not exhibiting such a 

 variety of remarkable physiological traits, the construction 



Ammophila sabulosa making its nest. 



of a nest, and the provisioning it with a supply of food for 

 the young when hatched, by a single insect, is sufficient to 

 prove that the instincts of that insect are not less developed 

 than in cases where a particular duty devolves upon a par- 

 ticular set of individuals. The food laid up in store by one 

 class of these insects, consists of honey collected from 

 flowers ; whilst in another class it consists of insects de- 

 posited in cells by the parent fly. Another class have the 

 instinct to deposit then- eggs in the already provisioned 

 cells of the working classes, the young of which latter are 

 starved to death by the previous exclusion of the parasitic 

 grub, which devours the supply provided for the former. 

 Another class is parasitic in a different sense of the word, 

 depositing their eggs upon or within the bodies of other 

 insects, chiefly in the larva state, the intestines of which 



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