Il6 THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. 



first that a considerable number of animals show 

 nothing of the kind. Let us leave aside all the 

 inferior beings to speak of those among whom we 

 may expect some degree of method. Crustacea, fish, 

 Batrachians, and many others lay their eggs, are 

 contented to conceal them a little so that they may 

 not become a too easy prey, and are altogether 

 indifferent as to what may happen afterwards. As 

 soon as they come out, the young obtain their own 

 food from day to day; myriads are destroyed, and if 

 the races remain so strong numerically it is because 

 they are saved by the innumerable quantity of eggs 

 produced by a single female. If it were not for this 

 prodigious fecundity these species would have dis- 

 appeared. Birds make no provision for their young; 

 but, on the other hand, as long as the latter are weak 

 and unable to obtain their own prey, the parents feed 

 them every day by hunting both for themselves and 

 the brood. 



I will not insist on those beings who, like mammals, 

 produce physiological reserves, not for their own use, 

 but for the profit of their young. The females of 

 these animals elaborate materials from their own 

 organism and store them up in the form of milk to 

 nourish the young. This fact is related to foresight, 

 with a view to offspring, exactly in the same way as 

 the Honey Ants show a transformation of foresight for 

 the individual. In both cases industry is replaced by 

 the function of a specially adapted organ. 



Foods manufactured by the parents for the young. 

 — It is especially insects with whose industries 

 we are here concerned, and they are more or less 

 instinctive in various cases. Every one knows how 

 the Hymenoptera prepare honey from the pollen of 



