2i6 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



her solitary little destiny in the midst of this vast universe 

 charged with terrible forces. A certain number of her sisters, 

 belonging to species already more skilful and better supplied 

 with utensils, such as the well-clad Colletes, or the marvellous 

 cutter of rose-leaves, the Megachile centuncularis, live in an 

 isolation no less profound ; and if by chance some creature 

 attach itself to them and share their dwelling, it will either 

 be an enemy, or, more often, a parasite. For the world 

 of bees is peopled with phantoms stranger than our own ; 

 and many a species will thus have a kind of mysterious and 

 inactive double, exactly similar to the victim it has selected, 

 save only that its immemorial idleness has caused it to lose 

 one by one its implements of labour, and that it exists solely 

 at the expense of the working type of its race.^ 



Among the bees, however, which are somewhat too 

 arbitrarily termed the " solitary Apidas," the social instinct 

 already is smouldering, like a flame crushed beneath the over- 

 whelming weight of matter that stifles all primitive life. And 

 here and there, in unexpected directions, as though reconnoit- 

 ring, with timid and sometimes fantastic outbursts, it will suc- 

 ceed in piercing through the mass that oppresses it, the pyre 

 that some day shall feed its triumph. 



If in this world all things be matter, this is surely its 

 most immaterial movement. Transition is called for from 



' Tlie humble-bees, for instance, have the Psithyri as parasites, while the Stellites 

 li\e on the Anthidia. "As regards the frequent identity of the parasite with its victim,'' 

 M. J. Perez very justly remarks in his book, "The Bees" : "One must necessarily admit 

 that the two genera are only different forms of the same type, and are united to 

 each other by the closest affinity. And to naturalists who believe in the theory of 

 evolution this relationship is not purely ideal, but real. The parasitic genus must be 

 regarded as merely a branch of the foraging genus, having lost its foraging organs 

 because of its adaptation to parasitic life." 



