426 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



' abolishing life at a single blow '. There is a much larger 

 soft area further back, but that is not utilized. It is a 

 knock-out blow under the chin that is dehvered. Clasping 

 its dead victim firmly, the Philanthus squeezes out the 

 honey from the stomach, and does so repeatedly till every 

 drop is enjoyed. The fresh corpse of the bee is then given 

 by the Philanthus to her grubs, to whom the honey is 

 noxious ! 



In many insects the mothers exert themselves unsparingly 

 to provide stores of food for the young, but participation 

 on the father's part is very rare. Among the dung-roUing 

 beetles there are exceptions — such as the Sisjrphus, the 

 males and females of which work together in kneading a 

 pill of dung and transporting it, over great difficulties, to 

 the underground burrow where the eggs are laid. In the 

 case of the scarabee, Fabre tells us that while the sexes 

 co-operate in rolhng balls of dung for their own consumption, 

 the female is left to do all the work of moulding the ball 

 and transporting it when it is for the use of the future 

 brood. 



In non-social as well as social insects, parental care is 

 sometimes exhibited. The quaint mole-crickets (Gryllo- 

 talpa) move their eggs in their underground nests according 

 to the weather, and guard them sedulously against black- 

 beetles and the hke. The earwig sits on her eggs, and older 

 writers have described what some who have recently 

 watched earwigs carefully have failed to confirm, that the 

 mother-insect gathers her young under her as a hen her 

 chickens. In spite of Fabre's criticism, it seems hkely 

 that De Geer was accurate in his description of the mother 

 birch-bug brooding over her eggs and young. 



F. P. Dodd describes the brooding habits of one of the 



