ACTING STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
73 
out of the hole, as is done by a well-digger when he digs a well; hut the ingenious 
workwoman eats her own chips as she works, and thus contrives to gratify her appetite 
for food, while she is at the same time obeying that wonderful instinct ot providing for 
her future offspring, which Nature has implanted in all female insects without excep¬ 
tion. The hole being now sufficiently deep, and sufficiently gouged out internally, the 
creature withdraws her snout leisurely and gradually, and, pausing for a tew seconds, 
seems to smack her lips at the idea, that she has at one and the same time discharged 
her duty towards society, and likewise tickled her own liquorish palate. Alas! that we 
poor human beings can so seldom enjoy that double gratification ! And now her ma¬ 
ternal feelings tell her that an egg is ready to be born into this world. But she is 
standing with her snout poised in the air over the excavation, which is intended to 
recehe the egg. The egg-laying apparatus is at the other end of her body. Do you 
suppose that she is going to drop an egg upon the smooth, slippery surface of the plum, 
and then trust to blind chance to dispose of it whether for weal or for woe ? No such 
thing» Insects are not the miserable, thoughtless, careless, improvident machines that 
most people suppose them to be. They look before they leap. They understand their 
business. They know as well as the most skilful human mechanic, what would be the 
consequences of a clumsy movement or an untoward arrangement; and they govern 
themselves accordingly. Every mother insect has about a hundred, and often several 
hundreds of eggs to provide for ; aud although it may, and often does, take weeks or 
months of the hardest and most unremitting toil, to find or furnish suitable nests or 
cells or other depositaries for all those eggs, yet, before she dies, her task is almost 
always accomplished down to the minutest detail. In the Insect Woild theie aie no 
Foundling Hospitals, no Jails, no Penitentiaries. Yet, without hope of reward for well¬ 
doing and without fear of punishment for evil-doing, the mother-insects invariably do 
their duty towards that future progeny, which, in the great majority of cases, they are 
destined never to behold. Do those proud beings, that are foolish enough to fancy that 
all this beautiful green world-swarming as it is with life and joy upon every inch of 
its surface —was made for their sole and exclusive benefit, always do the same ? Let 
us blush for our species, when we reflect that the horrible crimes of foeticide and in¬ 
fanticide have prevailed, in every age, to a hideous extent among every nation of man¬ 
kind ; while among my little friends, the Insects, whom we are facetiously pleased to 
classify among the “lower animals,” they are, in the true and correct sense of the 
terms, utterly unknown. It is undoubtedly the case that the Social Wasps, when at 
the approach of winter, (with the single exception of the young Queen Wasps, wine 1 
are destined to pass the winter in a torpid state and to originate new colonies m the 
following- spring,) inevitable starvation stares the whole colony in the face, do, unc er 
the stern pressure of necessity, mercifully despatch their young larvae with tlieir 
stings, to save them from a painful and lingering death. But how different is this horn 
the conduct of the human mother, who destroys the helpless being that is bone o lei 
bone and flesh of her flesh, not out of any love for that being, but to cover up her own 
shame from the eye of the world, or even out of the insane ambition of prolonging the 
period of her youthful charms, or the mere selfish desire to- escape from the troubles 
and responsibilities of motherhood! With a single snap of her jaws the mother Plum 
Gouger can easily destroy that helpless germ of future life and happiness, which is strug¬ 
gling within her to pass into this outer world. She can do it with perfect impuoi y. 
There are no Courts to convict her of the dreadful deed. She stands in no av e ot fine 
or imprisonment, or capital punishment. Yet never was such an unnatural act witnessed 
