ived by capturing prey in both phases--both as larvae and as
adults; they hunted for their own benefit as well as for the family.
They did not confine themselves to emptying the stomach of the bee, as
do their descendants to-day; they devoured the victim entire. From
beginning to end they remained carnivorous. Later there were fortunate
innovators, whose race supplanted the more conservative element, who
discovered an inexhaustible source of nourishment, to be obtained
without painful search or dangerous conflict: the saccharine exudation
of the flowers. The wasteful system of living upon prey, by no means
favourable to large populations, has been preserved for the feeble
larvae; but the vigorous adult has abandoned it for an easier and more
prosperous existence. Thus the Philanthus of our own days was gradually
developed; thus was formed the double system of nourishment practised by
the various predatory insects which we know.

The bee has done still better; from the moment of leaving the egg it
dispenses completely with chance-won aliments. It has invented honey,
the food of its larvae. Renouncing the chase for ever, and becoming
exclusively agricultural, this insect has acquired a degree of moral and
physical prosperity that the predatory species are far from sharing.
Hence the flourishing colonies of the Anthophorae, the Osmiae, the Eucerae,
the Halicti, and other makers of honey, while the hunters of prey work
in isolation; hence the societies in which the bee displays its
admirable talents, the supreme expression of instinct.

This is what I should say if I were a "transformist." All this is a
chain of highly logical deductions, and it hangs together with a certain
air of reality, such as we like to look for in a host of "transformist"
arguments which are put forward as irrefutable. Well, I make a present
of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, and without the least
regret; I do not believe a single word of it, and I confess my profound
ignorance of the origin of the twofold system of diet.

One thing I do see more clearly after all my experiments and research:
the tactics of the Philanthus. As a witness of its ferocious feasting,
the true motive of which was unknown to me, I treated it to all the
unfavourable epithets I could think of; called it assassin, bandit,
pirate, robber of the dead. Ignorance is always abusive; the man who
does not know is full of violent affirmations and malign
interpretations.