With such primitive habits as these, which emancipate the family at birth, without the least previous training, how far removed are we from the maternal tenderness of the Copris, [31] the Necrophorus, [32] the Sphex [33] and so many others! Apart from these privileged tribes, there is nothing very striking to be noted. It is enough to fill with despair the observer in search of facts really worth recording. The children, it is true, often make up to us for their untalented mothers. Their ingenuity is sometimes amazing, from the time when they are hatched. Witness our Larini. What can the mother do? Nothing but bury the eggs in the blossoms of the thistles. But what a singular industry on the part of the grub which builds itself a thatched hut, upholsters itself a cabin, cards itself a mattress of chopped hairs, makes itself a defensive pitcher, a donjon-keep, with the shellac prepared by its intestine! When the transformation is accomplished, what perspicacity on the part of the inexperienced insect, when it abandons its cosy home to seek a refuge under the rude shelter of the stones, foreseeing the winter which will ruin the natal villa! We possess the almanac of the past, telling us of the almanac of the future. The insect, with no records of the vicissitudes of the seasons; the insect, born in the dog-days, in the blazing heat of summer: the insect feels instinctively that this period of solar intoxication will not last; it knows, though it has never seen it happen, that its house is doomed soon to collapse; and it makes off before the roof falls in. For a Weevil, this is fine, magnificent. We might well envy the creature’s wisdom in being thus awake to the calamities of the future. However devoid of industry she may be, the least-gifted mother none the less submits an insoluble problem for our consideration. What is it that leads her to lay her eggs at spots where the larvæ will find food to their liking? The Pieris [34] goes to the cabbage, in which she has no personal interest. The plant, compressed into a head, has not yet flowered. Besides, its modest yellow blossoms have no greater attraction for the Butterfly than an infinity of other flowers distributed broadcast. The Vanessa [35] goes to the nettle, on which her caterpillars will feast, but on which the adult insect finds nothing to suck. When, in the summer gloaming, the Pine Cockchafer has long been whirling in the nuptial ballet around her favourite tree, she refreshes herself after her fatigue by nibbling a few pine-needles; then, with impetuous flight, she goes in search of some bare, sandy tract where the grass-roots lie decaying. Here, as often as not, there is no resinous aroma, there are no more pine-trees, the delight of the plumed beauty; and it is in this place, where nothing appeals to her own needs, that the mother, half-buried in the ground, will lay her egg.