i 3 2 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



eggs are laid in a mass, in the same cocoon or in the same supply 

 of food, and the young grow up together necessarily tolerant of 

 each other's presence. The swarm of caterpillars clustering on a 

 single branch, the globe of young spiders cohering round the remains 

 of the cocoon at first mean nothing except the accident of contiguity. 

 In most cases, as soon as the individuals have reached a certain 

 degree of development or of size, they separate if they are vegetable- 

 feeding creatures, or begin to attack each other and so forcibly 

 separate if they are carnivorous. But the existence of cannibal 

 larvae, even as rare exceptions, of instances where the first larva to 

 be developed devours its fellows, throws into stronger light one 

 striking result of the economic limitation of families and the 

 compulsory association of the young*. It has created the necessity 

 for a modification of the predatory instincts of carnivorous crea- 

 tures and has led to the existence of a power of recognition and 

 selection. Certain things in the surrounding world they attack 

 and eat ; other things are taboo, not to be attacked and not to 

 be eaten. 



The most important result of the institution of family life 

 amongst invertebrates is the appearance of the social communities 

 of termites, bees, wasps and ants. The termites are the simplest 

 case. They form a real family, and all the individuals are potential 

 males and females. The workers and soldiers are at first not more 

 than young animals which have to pass a period of servitude in 

 the paternal home, ministering to the needs of the community, 

 before they go out into the world to lead their own lives. From 

 such a condition has come about the strange existence of individuals 

 so modified for their early duties that they cannot pass on to the 

 normal duties of normal individuals. In the social wasps and bees 

 there is the further complication that only females are selected to 

 do household work, and modified so that they lose the ordinary 

 selfish instincts and devote themselves entirely to the purposes of 

 the community, whilst the males develop only the instincts and 

 capacities of sex, and when they have served their purpose are 

 turned out to die. In the communities of ants, as in termites, 

 there are individuals modified to serve as workers and as soldiers, 

 but, as in wasps and bees, these are all arrested females, and the 

 males are used only for the purposes of sex. The colonies of ants 

 last a much longer time than those of bees and wasps, which 

 are annual, and this has given the possibility of a more intricate 



