The sociability of the bees is the more instructive as predatory instincts and laziness continue to exist among the bees as well, and reappear each time that their growth is favoured by some circumstances. It is well known that there always are a number of bees which prefer a life of robbery to the laborious life of a worker; and that both periods of scarcity and periods of an unusually rich supply of food lead to an increase of the robbing class. When our crops are in and there remains but little to gather in our meadows and fields, robbing bees become of more frequent occurrence; while, on the other side, about the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the sugar refineries of Europe, robbery, laziness, and very often drunkenness become quite usual with the bees. We thus see that anti-social instincts continue to exist amidst the bees as well; but natural selection continually must eliminate them, because in the long run the practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than the development of individuals endowed with predatory inclinations. The cunningest and the shrewdest are eliminated in favour of those who understand the advantages of sociable life and mutual support. Certainly, neither the ants, nor the bees, nor even the termites, have risen to the conception of a higher solidarity embodying the whole of the species. In that respect they evidently have not attained a degree of development which we do not find even among our political, scientific, and religious leaders. Their social instincts hardly extend beyond the limits of the hive or the nest. However, colonies of no less than two hundred nests, belonging to two different species (Formica exsecta and F. pressilabris) have been described by Forel on Mount Tendre and Mount Saleve; and Forel maintains that each member of these colonies recognizes every other member of the colony, and that they all take part in common defence; while in Pennsylvania Mr. MacCook saw a whole nation of from 1,600 to 1,700 nests of the mound-making ant, all living in perfect intelligence; and Mr. Bates has described the hillocks of the termites covering large surfaces in the "campos"--some of the nests being the refuge of two or three different species, and most of them being connected by vaulted galleries or arcades.(10) Some steps towards the amalgamation of larger divisions of the species for purposes of mutual protection are thus met with even among the invertebrate animals.