se they originate during a single season and
break up at its end; for this very reason the wasp community is intensely
interesting to the student of comparative social evolution. In the spring
a solitary female emerges from the crevice where she has hibernated and
resumes active life; she feeds for a time to renew her strength and then
she constructs a simple nest of mud or masticated wood-pulp. In the first
few cells of this nest she deposits her eggs, and when they hatch she
herself provides the larvae with food, but still continues to enlarge the
house and to produce more eggs. Thus during the first few weeks of the
colony's existence this single individual performs a variety of tasks of
racial as well as of purely egoistic value; but as time goes on, a
profound change comes about in her activities and in the life of the whole
community. The members of the first brood do not grow into counterparts of
their mother; they are all sexless "workers" who progressively relieve
their parent of the tasks of nest-building and foraging and nursing, so
that their mother becomes a "queen" who devotes her entire time to the
special reproductive task which she only can perform. We may justly
compare the queen to the reproductive organ of _Hydra_, for the values to
the life of the species are identical in the two cases, while the various
classes of workers are counterparts of such units as the muscle and nerve
and nutritive components of the _Hydra_ or any other cell-community
individual. Another resemblance between the two is found in the death of
all the sexless individuals at the end of the season, when reproducing
males and females are finally formed, of whom the fertile queens only
survive in their winter hiding places; and again we can discover the cause
for biological death in that division of labor which calls upon certain
members of the whole community to perform tasks that have no value when
once provision has been made for perpetuating the species. Finally the
mode by which the colony grows and amplifies is in all respects like the
embryonic development of an egg into a _Hydra_, so that we may add the
phrase "social embryology" to our vocabulary. The original female is an
undifferentiated master of all trades; the small tribe she first
establishes is little better off than a horde of savages; but during its
seasonal existence the community increases in numbers and complexity until
it advances well toward the civilized condit