cept in imagination
the different stages through which, in time, and in a determined
species, acts at first imperfect, but designed, have become perfect
and instinctive, we can at least find in space different degrees of
the same instinct in allied genera which lead us by a succession of
transitions from mechanical action to reflective action.

As I cannot quote all the facts showing this care for the future, I
will select a few. It must be said at first that a considerable number
of animals show nothing of the kind. Let us leave aside all the
inferior beings to speak of those among whom we may expect some degree
of method. Crustacea, fish, Batrachians, and many others lay their
eggs, are contented to conceal them a little so that they may not
become a too easy prey, and are altogether indifferent as to what may
happen afterwards. As soon as they come out, the young obtain their
own food from day to day; myriads are destroyed, and if the races
remain so strong numerically it is because they are saved by the
innumerable quantity of eggs produced by a single female. If it were
not for this prodigious fecundity these species would have
disappeared. Birds make no provision for their young; but, on the
other hand, as long as the latter are weak and unable to obtain their
own prey, the parents feed them every day by hunting both for
themselves and the brood.

I will not insist on those beings who, like mammals, produce
physiological reserves, not for their own use, but for the profit of
their young. The females of these animals elaborate materials from
their own organism and store them up in the form of milk to nourish
the young. This fact is related to foresight, with a view to
offspring, exactly in the same way as the Honey Ants show a
transformation of foresight for the individual. In both cases industry
is replaced by the function of a specially adapted organ.

_Foods manufactured by the parents for the young._--It is especially
insects with whose industries we are here concerned, and they are more
or less instinctive in various cases. Every one knows how the
Hymenoptera prepare honey from the pollen of flowers, to some extent
for themselves, but especially in order that their young may at the
moment of appearance possess a food which will enable them to undergo
their first metamorphosis sheltered from the inclemencies outside.
These foods are enclosed with great art, according to the species,
either in skilfully-cons