LITMIR.BIZ

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are left to look after themselves, the eggs are placed by the mother in a suitable environment so that the young can be sure of a sufficiency of food until they can feed themselves. The numerous caterpillars offer a well-known illustration of this primitive care, where it is common for the eggs to be attached to the food-plant by means of some adhesive covering. More striking is the case of certain weevils, which, in order to endow their young with a suitable home, possess the art of rolling a leaf in which the eggs are laid, thus forming a nursery, which serves as board and lodging in one.

      Fabre, in a wonderful account of the most skilful of these workers, the Poplar weevil, states that not far from the scroll, made and laboriously rolled by the mother, we almost always find the male. But do not make a mistake. The weevil father is not moved by devotion to the family interests as was the father in the last case we examined. No, rather he is filled with the egoistic desire of the male. But I must give the history as Fabre relates it, fearing to spoil his beautiful account by my own halting description—

      “What is he doing there, the idler? Is he watching the work as a mere inquisitive onlooker? From time to time I see him take his stand behind the manufacturer, in the groove of the fold, hang on to a cylinder and join for a little in the work. This is a means of declaring his flame and urging his merits. After several refusals and notwithstanding advances made by a brief collaboration at the scroll, the impatient one is accepted. For ten minutes the rolling is suspended. The male still looks on. Sooner or later a new visit is paid to the worker by the dawdler, who, under pretence of assisting, plants his claws for a moment into the rolling piece, plucks up courage and renews his exploits with the same vigour as though nothing had yet happened. And this is repeated four or five times during the making of a single cigar.”

      Here, it may be remarked in passing, we seem to see the first faint expression of the father’s interest in the family, which, if I may hazard a guess, may have started in this way as a means of gaining his desire with the female. The correctness of this surmise will receive considerable confirmation as we proceed with our inquiry. And if analogies with animal conduct were not so apt to be misleading, I would venture to suggest the persistence of the same egoistic factor among many human fathers. But for the present I must leave this question.

      From the very beginning of life parental sacrifice is more common in the mother; it is in exceptional cases that her devotion is shared by the father. But such good fathers are of special importance to our inquiry. Even more interesting are those species among which the father takes all charge of the young, while the mother spends her time away from the family. Nor is this departure from what we may call the normal order of the family so surprising as at first sight it may seem, if we can account for the necessity under which probably it arose and seek to explain it.

      The welfare of the young is a matter of vital urgency; instinct dictates to the animals what reason dictates to us. Nature, as if to show her resourcefulness, her love of successful experiments, is always discovering contrary ways of attaining the same end. And what I wish to make clear is this: when, for some reason that we do not know, the family cares are neglected by the mothers, the work of tending and feeding the young is undertaken by the fathers. I shall have much more to say on this question at a later stage, and I ask you to keep it persistently in the focus of your attention. I desire to emphasise it at once. Whatever groups of animals we survey, we shall find examples of this replacement of the mother by the father, new aspects of the family, which may afford us a better grip of some problems that at present elude us.

      The reality of the mother’s regard for the young is proved among many insects by the building of a nest to safeguard the family. The Anthidium, or tailor-bee, and the Chalicodoma, a species of wild bee, afford illustrations of this maternal forethought. In the former case the eggs, when laid, are placed in the ground, protected in cotton-felt satchels made by the mother from fibre which she scratches with her mandibles from the cobwebby stalks of the yellow centaury; the Chalicodoma works with cement and gravel carefully selected from some ruined building, and with such difficult material she fashions her nursery. Even more remarkable is the home of the Magachilles, or leaf-cutting bee. The mother bee, using her mandibles as scissors, cuts pieces from the leaves of the trees, wherewith she forms thimble-shaped wallets to contain the honey and eggs; the larger oval pieces which she cuts make the sides and the floor, and the round pieces the lid or door. These leaf-formed thimbles are placed in a row, one on top of the other, sometimes as many as a dozen being used. The cylinder thus formed is fitted into the deserted home of some other insect, such as the tunnels of fat earth-worms, the apartments bored in the trunks of trees by the larvæ of the Capricorn beetles, or, failing these, a reed stump or crevice in the wall is selected. But the choice of the home is always carefully made, it would seem, according to the tastes of the mothers. This structure, in part made and in part borrowed, forms the leaf-cutter’s nest.[11]

      Numerous cases of home-making might be recorded, and the difficulty rests in the selection. Many spiders and the book scorpion carry their eggs in a silken bag attached to the under surface of the body. There is a case recorded that shows heroic devotion on the part of one spider mother. She was placed (in order that her behaviour might be watched) in the pit of an ant-lion. At once the enemy seized the eggs and tore them from her charge. Then the mother, though she was driven out of the pit, returned and chose to be dragged in and buried alive rather than desert her charge.[12]

      A regular process of incubation is practised by the mother earwig, and the young, when hatched, keep close to her for protection. Special food for the young is prepared by many mothers, as, for instance, among the apidæ, who prepare a disgorged food in the form of a sweet milk juice. The Hymenoptera mothers, upon whom the cares of motherhood devolve in their fulness, provide board and lodging for their family. Stores of insects are caught and preserved in the nursery larder, being cunningly paralysed so that live food may be ready when needed by the children. These clever mothers, as Fabre has shown us, become masters of a host of arts for the benefit of a family which their faceted eyes will never see.

      Of the domestic economy of the bees and ants whole volumes might be, and have been, written. The habits of the termites, the so-called white ants, are less widely known, although they show one of the most remarkable developments of the family that I have met. Each colony is really a patriarchal family, in which the members, all the descendants of a single pair, live in a community, and work in different ways. All the individuals are at first true males and females. Some of these develop slowly, but grow up perfect insects able to form new families. But the workers and the soldiers have to pass a period of youthful servitude in the community. These develop quickly, and grow up blind and wingless, and their reproductive organs remain in a condition of arrested development. Some of these are workers, and carry out the duties of the community; others at the same time develop jaws and heads of enormous size. It is their duty to defend the colony. And from this has come about the strange condition of their being so altered and trained for their special work that they cannot pass on to the normal life and normal duties of perfect individuals.

      Among the bees and some social wasps there is a further step, and only females are selected to do household work, and modified so that they lose the ordinary personal instincts and devote themselves entirely to working for the community, while the males develop only the instincts and capacities of sex. In some species of wasps, however, the males do some work, chiefly domestic, for which they are fed by their foraging sisters. In the communities of ants, as in the termites, there are individuals modified to serve as workers and as soldiers; but here again they are all arrested females, and the males are used only for the purpose of sex. The colonies of ants last much longer than those of the bees and wasps, which are annual, and this has given the possibility of the elaboration of a very complex and extraordinary community.[13]

      We are always being surprised by new experiments in family life which show the ready adaptation of habits to special circumstances. A bald statement of these facts seems to tell very little. I leave untouched a whole series of devices and wonderful behaviour—so much that I should like to record. In all these cases we see the maternal instinct in the making. But so varied and so fitting to the needed purpose are the actions of these lowly parents that much which they do gives an impression of the inexplicable—even the magical.

      It is common to explain everything by the word “instinct.” But does

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