128 HUMBLE CREATURES. 



for instancBj resort to certain devices for the capture 

 of prey only when they are compelled to do so by 

 the demands of hunger, and allow it to pass unmo- 

 lested when no such craving is felt. 



The higher we mount in the animal scale, the more 

 compHcated such acts become, \mtil at length they 

 merge into those of true reason ; and it is sometimes 

 beyond the power of man, in the present state of his 

 knowledge, to decide whether certain actions in the 

 lower animals are purely instinctive, that is to say, 

 performed without the aid of an intelligent will, or 

 whether they are the result of the higher reasoning 

 faculties. 



Let us quote, from the pages of Vogt, an interest- 

 ing illustration of such a mysterious semi-rational 

 act in one of the Hymenopterous insects *. 



"The Gold Wasp {Hedychrum regium) deposits 

 her eggs in the nests of the ordinary Mason-Bee 

 {Osmia muraria), which are often appended to old 

 walls, at a considerable height above the ground, and 

 are provisioned by the builder with honey and pollen. 

 This provender, collected by the Mason-Bee for the 

 nourishment of her brood, is consumed by the larvae 

 of the Gold Wasp, if the latter succeed in introducing 

 her ova into the nest. One of these, having dis- 

 covered such a nest, was just ia the act of inserting 

 her body for the purpose of depositing an egg therein, 



gard, we alioiild be disposed to look upon sucli displays of in- 

 stinct as the least intelligent of any. — (See p. 138.) 

 * Translated from ' Zoologische Briefe.' 



