and with protection. Other insects select the sites from which they
will first get forwarded to the destination best adapted for their
development. Thus some horseflies lay their eggs upon the lips of
horses or upon parts where they are accustomed to lick themselves.
The eggs get conveyed hence into the entrails, the proper place for
their development,--and are excreted upon their arrival at maturity.
The flies that infest cattle know so well how to select the most
vigorous and healthiest beasts, that cattle-dealers and tanners place
entire dependence upon them, and prefer those beasts and hides that
are most scarred by maggots. This selection of the best cattle by
the help of these flies is no evidence in support of the conclusion
that the flies possess the power of making experiments consciously
and of reflecting thereupon, even though the men whose trade it is to
do this recognise them as their masters. The solitary wasp makes a
hole several inches deep in the sand, lays her egg, and packs along
with it a number of green maggots that have no legs, and which, being
on the point of becoming chrysalides, are well nourished and able to
go a long time without food; she packs these maggots so closely
together that they cannot move nor turn into chrysalides, and just
enough of them to support the larva until it becomes a chrysalis. A
kind of bug (cerceris bupresticida), which itself lives only upon
pollen, lays her eggs in an underground cell, and with each one of
them she deposits three beetles, which she has lain in wait for and
captured when they were still weak through having only just left off
being chrysalides. She kills these beetles, and appears to smear
them with a fluid whereby she preserves them fresh and suitable for
food. Many kinds of wasps open the cells in which their larvae are
confined when these must have consumed the provision that was left
with them. They supply them with more food, and again close the
cell. Ants, again, hit always upon exactly the right moment for