OF THE INTELLIGENCE AND OF INSTINCT. 



175 



of Plants, in Paris, as shown by their collecting bits of wood 

 for a work which was not to be carried through. 



Perfect societies, like the one just described, are rare amongst 

 birds ; yet we have in the Loxia soda, a kind of sparrow of 

 the Cape of Good Hope, a specimen of the sociable instinct. 

 These birds construct their nests under a roof-work common 

 to the whole colony (Pig. 129). 



Fig. 129. Nest of the Republican, or Sociable Grosbeak. 



The nests of wasps surprise us by the regularity and per- 

 fection of their construction. Wasps detach, by means of 

 their mandibles, parcels of old wood, which they convert into 

 a kind of paste resembling pasteboard, with which they con- 

 struct rows of hexagonal qells ; these rows are placed parallel 

 to each other, and at certain distances supported by pillars, 

 which serve also to suspend them ; finally, the whole is placed 

 sometimes in the air, at others in the hollow of a tree, or 

 even underground, according to the species, exposed or en- 

 closed in a common covering (Fig. 130). 

 **/ 332. Community of labour is the great feature in the 

 history of the bee ; but the bee, in its relations to the work- 



