212 BOMBAY DUCKS 
ing all day long for her offspring which she will never 
see. I do not think that she even knows that her eggs 
will give rise to young wasps. She toils for the benefit 
of these because that strange internal force which we 
call instinct compels her to do so. She knows not 
what she is doing, yet no human parent could work 
harder in the interests of her offspring. Analogy 
would lead us to think that the female wasp loves her 
children. Yet this is impossible. The question thus 
arises therefore in the case of the higher animals, how 
much of their solicitude for their offspring is due to 
affection and how much to blind instinct? 
The grub which the egg will produce is both car- 
nivorous and voracious, and, what is more, it must be 
fed upon fresh meat. Here, then, is a difficult problem 
which the wasp has to solve: how to provide fresh 
meat for her offspring. It is obviously useless to kill 
some creatures and place them underground, for by 
the time the young one hatches out the food will have 
become putrid. If, on the other hand, she catch some 
feeble creatures and put them alive into the nest, 
they will wriggle and struggle, so that, if they do not 
damage the egg, they will at least knock it away from 
them. This would be fatal were it to take place, for 
the grub, when it first emerges from the egg, is so weak 
that it cannot move by so much as a hair’s breadth, 
so that it will starve to death unless it is hatched right 
in the midst of its food-supply. 
Let us see how the wasp solves the problem. She 
presently returns carrying a thin greenish caterpillar 
quite as long as herself. She flies with it into the 
