INSECTS IN GENERAL. 119 



Being destitute of wings, the neuter ants live on the 

 ground, or establish themselves in the clefts of walls and 

 trees, at but a small elevation above the soil. Those which 

 construct habitations employ a considerable time in bringing 

 together the materials which are to compose it. All their 

 works are of a rustic and very simple construction. The 

 wasps, humble-bees, and bees, to which the organs of flight 

 afford a facility of removing rapidly and to great distances 

 from their dwellings, and to return thither with equal cele- 

 rity, after having collected the materials of their choice, are 

 the most favoured in their works. Their productions are 

 known, and are the objects of our admiration. But the fol- 

 lowing observation seems to have escaped the historians of 

 these animals. Of all the substances which it is possible for 

 them to employ, those which they prefer are the most proper 

 for the construction of an edifice which, suspended in the air, 

 should be, in a given volume, the best arranged for the num- 

 ber of the population, the least weighty, and the most solid 

 in relation to the duration of the society. Thus the nests of 

 wasps consist of a sort of pasteboard or very thick paper, 

 in the construction of which the ligneous substance predomi- 

 nates. The bee knows how to gather and prepare a resinous 

 substance, capable, from its ductility, of being reduced into 

 very slender laminae, of being fashioned at the will of tiie 

 animal, namely, wax, a substance equally light and resisting, 

 of which the bee is the sole fabricator. The entrance of the 

 pieces which compose the edifice is sometimes vertical, some- 

 times horizontal, but always at the under part, which places 

 its inhabitants in shelter from the rain, even when the solid 

 walls do not protect them. 



The bee is, of all these insects, the one whose instinct is 

 the most perfect, the only one whose habits are not at all 

 carnivorous, and whose existence is one of the blessings of 

 nature. The others are born for destruction; she, on the 



