184 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 
A highly specialized storing routine like that of 
hive-bees always gives one at first an impression 
of the inexplicable—even magical. It is wiser 
to start from much simpler collecting industries, 
for an elaborate instinctive capacity is probably 
the result of adding on one embellishment after 
another to a broad commonplace foundation, of 
carrying on to a fine issue a kind of behavior 
which in its rudiments is shared by many. A 
beginning of storing may be looked for, perhaps, in 
activities like those of earthworms, which collect 
leaves and drag them down into their burrows, 
at once making these more comfortable and pro- 
viding a supply of food for the rainy day. It is 
surely the acquisitive habit that they have, these 
earthworms, for we got more than fourscore leaflets 
from one burrow, and we have often seen feathers 
as well as leaves being taken underground. We 
would suggest that one of the roots of the more 
specialized storing activities, which have a definite 
reference to an on-coming scarce time, is to be 
found in a generalized acquisitiveness like that of 
the earthworms, whose importance Gilbert White 
and Charles Darwin were at one in recognizing. 
It is among insects, however, that we find an 
inclined plane of storing activities that lead even- 
tually to the climax illustrated by hive-bees and 
by some of the ants. Many visitors to the Medi- 
terranean region have admired the industry of the 
scarabees who roll marble-sized balls of dung to their 
holes, and there gnaw at them continuously till all 
