THE NATURAL 



armed of all our insects, is inoffensive; while the carabe, 

 of peaceful appearance, is a formidable beast of prey. 

 Apropos of the pill in which the scarab shuts its egg, the 

 skill with which it is worked up and felted, in a dark 

 hole by a stump-armed insect, Fabre says simply: "It 

 gave me the idea of an elephant wanting to make lace." 

 But in what insect will we see perfect accord of work and 

 organ? In the bee? It would scarcely seem so. The bee 

 uses for building, modelling, waxing, bottling honey, ex- 

 actly the same organs that her sisters, the ammophile, 

 bembex, sphex, ant, chalicodome, use for hollowing earth, 

 excavating sand, making cellars, mud houses. The 

 libellule does nothing with the hooks which render the 

 termite dangerous, and she loafs, while her industrious 

 brother, also nevroptera and nothing more, builds Hima- 

 layas. 



The mole-cricket is so well organized for digging with 

 her short powerful bow legs that she could cut sandstone: 

 she frequents only the soft soil of gardens. The anto- 

 phore, on the other hand, with no instruments save her 

 mediocre mandibles, her velvet paws, forces the cement 

 which holds the stone walls together, and bores the hard- 

 ened earth of the slopes by the roadside. 



Insects, like man, moreover, ask nothing better than 

 to do nothing and to let their tools sleep; the xylocope, 

 that fine violet bumble-bee, who ought to bore into wood, 

 a gallery twice a hand's length wherein to lay her eggs, 

 if she finds a suitable hole ready made, confines herself 

 to the meagerest possible works of accommodation. In 

 sum, the insects who like the saw-fly (tenthredes) use a 

 precise instrument for a precise job, are almost rare. 

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