ISO THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



lengthy repast which shall transform it into a perfect insect. 

 But nature, that has decreed this ordeal of battle, has, on the 

 other hand, established the prize of victory with such miserly 

 precision, that nothing short of an entire egg will suffice for 

 the nourishment of a single triongulin ; so that, as we are 

 informed by M. Mayet, to whom we owe the account of 

 these disconcerting adventures, there is lacking to our con- 

 queror the food its last victim consumed before death ; and 

 incapable, therefore, of achieving the first stage of its trans- 

 formation, it dies in its turn, adhering to the skin of the egg, 

 or adding itself, in the sugary liquid, to the number of the 

 drowned. 



80 



This case, though rarely to be followed so closely, is 

 not unique in natural history. We have here, laid bare 

 before us, the struggle between the conscious will of the 

 triongulin, that seeks to live, and the obscure and general 

 will of nature, that not only desires that the triongulin 

 should live, but is anxious even that its life should be im- 

 proved and fortified to a degree beyond that to which its 

 own will impels it. But through some strange inadvertence 

 the amelioration nature imposes suppresses the life of even 

 the fittest, and the Sitaris colletes would have long since dis- 

 appeared had not chance, acting in opposition to the desires 

 of nature, permitted isolated individuals to escape from the 

 excellent and far-seeing law which ordains on all sides the 

 triumph of the stronger. 



Can this mighty power err, then, that seems unconscious 



