SO HABITS AND INSTINCTS OP ANIMALS. CHAP. I. 



or tiger beetle. Or, to omit the endless instances fur- 

 nished by wasps, ants, the Termites, &c., what animals 

 can be adduced, which, like the hive bee, associating in 

 societies, build regular cities, composed of cells formed 

 with geometrical precision, divided into dwellings 

 adapted in capacity to different orders of the society, 

 or storehouses for containing a supply of provisions?"* 

 (34.) In depositing their eggs, insects exhibit great 

 sagacity, always placing them in those substances, 

 whether animal or vegetable, where the young progeny 

 can best find nourishment. An unerring instinct leads 

 them to select those only, which are proper for the fu- 

 ture support of their young ; while the care with which 

 the caterpillar weaves itself a case, or burrows deep into 

 the earth, preparatory to the change which nature or- 

 dains that it should undergo, can only be ascribed to 

 the dictations of an impulse altogether superior and 

 independent of the animal from whom it appears to 

 emanate. 



(35.) The nut weevil (Curculio nucum L., fig. 7.) 

 is a striking exemplification of the first of these in- 

 stincts, or that which points out 

 7 ^ Vjjx/ ^ to insects the fitting place for the 



reception of their unborn pro- 

 geny. The female, towards the 

 beginning of August, while the 

 nuts are yet soft and tender, care- 

 fully perforates the rind, and 

 lodges an egg within the punc- 

 ture : this operation is continued 

 until her whole stock is ex- 

 hausted ; thus the maggots, 

 hatched from these eggs, feed upon the kernel which 

 surrounds them ; and, when the fall of the nut takes 

 place, creep safely out of the little hole in the shell, and 

 immediately burrows under ground, where each soon 

 after casts its skin and becomes a chrysalis, t Again, 



Kirby and Spence's Introd. to Entomology. 

 White's Selborne, vol. ii. p, 99. 



