306 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



by De Geer in her nest with fifty or sixty young ones, when 

 manifesting nothing of her usual timidity, so obstinately did 

 she persist in remaining with them, that to drive her away it 

 was necessary to cut her whole nest in pieces.^ 



I must now conduct you to a hasty survey of those insects 

 which live together in societies, and fabricate dwellings for 

 the community, such as ants, wasps, bees, humble-bees, and 

 termites, whose great object (sometimes combined, indeed, 

 with the storing up of a stock of winter provisions for them- 

 selves) is the nutrition and education of their yoimg. Of the 

 proceedings of many of these insects we know comparatively 

 nothing. There are, it is likely, some hundreds of distinct 

 species of bees which live in societies, and form nests of 

 a different and peculiar construction. The constitution of 

 these societies is probably as various as the exterior forms of 

 their nests, and their habits possibly curious in the highest 

 degree ; yet our knowledge is almost confined to the economy 

 of the hive-bee and of some species of humble-bees. The 

 same may be said of wasps, ants, and termites, of which, 

 though there is a vast variety of different kinds, we are ac- 

 quainted with the history of but a very few. You will not 

 therefore expect more than a sketch of the most interesting 

 traits of affection for their young manifested by the common 

 species of each genus. 



One circumstance must be premised with regard to the 

 education of the young of most of those insects which live in 

 society, truly extraordinary, and without parallel in any other 

 department of nature ; namely, that this oflfice, except under 

 particular circumstances, is not undertaken by the female 

 which has given birth to them, but by the workers, or 

 neuters, as they are sometimes called, which, though bound 

 to the offspring of the common mother of the society by no 

 other than fraternal ties, exhibit towards them all the marks 

 of the most ardent parental affection, building habitations for 

 their use, feeding them, and tending them with incessant 

 solicitude, and willingly sacrificing their lives in defence of 



> De Geer, vii. 2G8. 



