. The Cambridge natural history. Zoology. FOSSORIAL SOLITARY WASPS 91 forms, they are true individualists, and their lives and instincts offer many subjects for reflection. Unlike the social Insects they can learn nothing whatever from either example or precept. The skill of each individual is prompted by no imitation. The life is short, the later stages of the individual life are totally different from the earlier: the individuals of one generation only in rare cases see even the commencement of the life of the next; the progeny, for the benefit of which they labour with. ?IG. 37.—Sceliphron

. The Cambridge natural history. Zoology. FOSSORIAL SOLITARY WASPS 91 forms, they are true individualists, and their lives and instincts offer many subjects for reflection. Unlike the social Insects they can learn nothing whatever from either example or precept. The skill of each individual is prompted by no imitation. The life is short, the later stages of the individual life are totally different from the earlier: the individuals of one generation only in rare cases see even the commencement of the life of the next; the progeny, for the benefit of which they labour with. ?IG. 37.—Sceliphron

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. The Cambridge natural history. Zoology. FOSSORIAL SOLITARY WASPS 91 forms, they are true individualists, and their lives and instincts offer many subjects for reflection. Unlike the social Insects they can learn nothing whatever from either example or precept. The skill of each individual is prompted by no imitation. The life is short, the later stages of the individual life are totally different from the earlier: the individuals of one generation only in rare cases see even the commencement of the life of the next; the progeny, for the benefit of which they labour with. ?IG. 37.—Sceliphron nigripes ? (Sub-Pam. Sphegides). Amazons, x f. unsurpassable skill and industry, being unknown to them. Were such a solicitude displayed by ourselves we should connect it with a high sense of duty, and poets and moralists would vie in its laudation. But having dubbed ourselves the higher animals, we ascribe the eagerness of the solitary wasp to impulse or instinct, and we exterminate their numerous species from the face of the earth for ever, without even seeking to make a prior ac- quaintance with them. Meanwhile our economists and moralists devote their volumes to admiration of the progress of the civilisa- tion that effects this destruction and tolerates this negligence.. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.. Harmer, S. F. (Sidney Frederic), Sir, 1862- ed; Shipley, A. E. (Arthur Everett), Sir, 1861-1927. ed. [London, Macmillan and Co. , Limited; New York, The Macmillan Company