268 The Unity of the Organism 



among animals is well known to all who have had consid- 

 erable experience with domestic animals. 



Excessive activity in connection with the alimentary func- 

 tion must now be glanced at. That there is no nice quanti- 

 tative balance between the food necessities of the animal and 

 the food gathering instincts and impulses and efforts on the 

 basis of the principle of natural economy and parsimony, 

 is shown conclusively it would seem by many animals which 

 have the storing habit. The honey bee is an example of 

 this among insects. Given a sufficient supply of flowers to 

 work on, in the wild state these bees seem always to store 

 away more food material than they consume. 



The extent of their honey-making is limited rather by 

 the raw material available and by their own restricted phys- 

 ical powers than by their nutritional needs. This is the im- 

 pression I have from my observations on wild and tame bees 

 and I find it to coincide with that of other naturalists whose 

 opportunity for observing wild bees has been much greater 

 than mine. For example my esteemed naturalist friend, Mr. 

 Frank Stephens of San Diego, California, reminds me that 

 the view is confirmed by the fact that in "bee trees" a por- 

 tion of the comb containing honey is not infrequently black 

 and shows signs of being old. 



Darwin made quite a point, it may be recalled, of the 

 economy in some aspects of the. bee's work. "The comb of 

 the hive-bee," he says, "as far as we can see, is absolutely 

 perfect in economising labour and wax." (Cell-Making In- 

 stinct of the Hive-Bee, in The Origin of Species.) 14 But a 

 thoroughly economic adjustment between different parts of 

 a given complicated operation, and economy of the opera- 

 tion as a whole, are very different. 



As an instance of excessive repetition in the food-getting 

 activities among the insects, the following from Fabre may 

 be taken as fairly typical. A solitary wasp of the genus 

 Sphex captures and slays a locust, but instead of using it 



