Bramble-bees and Others 



down the means of averting the terrible 

 danger of belated hatchings. A few mothers, 

 escaping at rare intervals from the catacombs 

 blocked by the Osmise, must have retained a 

 lively memory, a powerful impression of their 

 desperate struggle through the mass of earth; 

 they must have inspired their descendants with 

 a dread of those vast dwellings where the 

 stranger comes afterwards and builds; they 

 must have taught them by habit the means of 

 safety, the use of the medium-sized shell, 

 which the nest fills to the mouth. So far as 

 the prosperity of the race was concerned, the 

 discontinuance of the system of empty vesti- 

 bules was far more important than the In- 

 vention of the barricade, which is not alto- 

 gether indispensable: It would have saved 

 them from perishing miserably, behind Im- 

 penetrable walls, and would have consider- 

 ably increased the numbers of their posterity. 

 Thousands and thousands of experiments 

 have been made throughout the ages with 

 Snail-shells of average dimensions: the thing 

 is certain, because I find many of them to-day. 

 Well, have these life-saving experiments, with 

 their immense importance to the race, become 

 general by hereditary bequest? Not at all: 



S2Z 



