THE STORING INSTINCT 185 



is consumed. In this there is, indeed, only the first 

 stage of storing, but the late M. Henri Fabre de- 

 scribed in his inimitable way how the mother 

 scarabee molds a pear-shaped mass and deposits 

 at the narrow end an egg which occupies a special 

 hatching chamber and has besides it a special first 

 meal for the emerging grub ! Here it is not difficult 

 to imagine the step from collecting for self to collect- 

 ing for others, and a great interest is attached to 

 Fabre's observations of the Spanish Copris and some 

 related dung-beetles which are unique among non- 

 social insects, inasmuch as the mother survives to 

 see the emergence and complete metamorphosis 

 of the family (a very small one) for whose early 

 sustenance she has industriously stored. It seems 

 to us reasonable to suppose that this represents an 

 old-fashioned state of affairs, and that the ordinary 

 occurrence (that the mother, among the higher 

 orders of insects, does not survive to see her young 

 in the perfect state) is a secondary punctuation of 

 the life-history. 



There is an evolutionist gratification in studying 

 the storing activities of bees, for they are exhibited 

 in such varied degrees of elaboration by different 

 types. Among the solitary bees the mother makes a 

 store for the brood which she never survives to see; 

 among humble-bees the store is begun by the 

 mother but continued by her worker-children, 

 and there are species (beyond British bounds) in 

 which at least a part of the society survives the 

 winter: in tropical species of the bees generically 



