THE NATURAL 



gourmandizing: the philanthe kills bees in order to feed 

 her larvae, who have, however, so great a repugnance 

 for honey that they die upon contact with it; it is there- 

 fore out of sheer maternal devotion that she intoxicates 

 herself with this poison! All things are, in nature, pos- 

 sible. But it might not be unreasonable to say that if 

 the larvae of the philanthe hate honey, it is because their 

 greatly honey-loving mother has never allowed them a 

 drop of it. 



One of the rare cases of hymenoptera where the 

 female appears inferior to the male is the mutille or 

 ant-spider. The male is larger, has wings and lives on 

 flowers. The female is apteral, but provided with a 

 noisy apparatus for attracting the male's attention. The 

 male of the cynips of the oak-apple, the terminal cynips, 

 has a blond body with large diaphanous wings, the brown 

 and black female is wingless. The male yellow cimbex 

 slender, and brown with a spot of yellow, is so different 

 from the round female with yellow belly and black head, 

 that they were long thought of different species. 



Ants like all social hymenoptera are, as one knows, 

 divided into three sexes, winged males and females and 

 wingless neuters. Fecundation takes place in the air; 

 the lovers fly up, join, fall enlocked, a golden cloud which 

 the death of the males disperses, while the females, losing 

 their wings, re-enter the house for egg-laying. The workers 

 or neuters are generally smaller, as noticeably in the great 

 red wood-ants, who dig their shelters in stumps. White 

 ants or termites 1 show very accentuated dimorphism; 



1 These are nevroptera or pseudo-nevroptera, but their habits 

 bring them noticeably near to social hymenoptera. 



38 



