y allow a freer play of the constituents; but nevertheless the same laws
that control the activities of the cells making up what we now take as the
individual element, command obedience on the part of the interrelated
members of an insect community with equal strictness.

A butterfly or a moth is primarily egoistic and unsocial in the ordinary
sense during its entire life-history, until the final reproductive act
which has a value to the species. The caterpillar larva devotes all of its
energies to feeding and growing, unconcerned with the final duties of the
moth with which it is connected just as the indifferent unit of a young
_Volvox_ colony is related to a reproducing member of the full-grown
organism. Now and then, it is true, species like the so-called tent
caterpillar are met with where numerous larvae spin silken communal nests
to which they retire at night and in which they remain to molt. The pupa,
like the larva, is individualistic and employs its time in producing the
final adult form. The mature individual, however, is constructed almost
solely for the greater purpose of perpetuating the species. Indeed the
larger silkworm moths do not and cannot feed, and their value is only that
of a device for keeping the race established. Adult may-flies live only a
few minutes, just long enough to provide for the fertilization and
deposition of the eggs, although to prepare for these acts the young
individuals must have toiled for months; the preparatory time may amount
to many years in such a case as the seventeen-year locust. But nature is
satisfied, as long as the organic mechanisms obey her double commandment,
"Live and grow so as to multiply." Like an _Amoeba_, the solitary insect
must be egoistic at first, in order to be altruistic in a racial sense in
its last days.

Wasps, bees, and ants provide many familiar examples of colonial
organizations that become all the more marvelous on closer acquaintance,
on account of their resemblances to human associations on the one hand,
and to cell-associations on the other. Their illustrative beauty is
enhanced by their wide variety, for they grade from counterparts of highly
civilized men down to a savage among insects, such as the strictly
solitary digger-wasp, whose instincts served to exemplify the insect type
of "mentality" in the discussions of the preceding chapter.

The true communities founded by wasps and hornets must be assigned to a
low grade in the scale becau