, as far as I can judge by sight alone.
To obtain exactly the respective quantities of substance, I should need
delicate balances, capable of weighing down to a milligramme. My
clumsy villager's scales, on which potatoes may be weighed to within a
kilogramme or so, do not permit of this precision. I must therefore rely
on the evidence of my sight alone, evidence, for that matter, which is
amply sufficient in the present instance. Compared with his mate, the
Mantis-hunting Tachytes is likewise a pigmy. We are quite astonished to
see him pestering his giantess on the threshold of the burrows.

We observe differences no less pronounced of size--and consequently
of volume, mass and weight--in the two sexes of many Osmiae. The
differences are less emphatic, but are still on the same side, in the
Cerceres, the Stizi, the Spheges, the Chalicodomae and many more. It is
therefore the rule that the male is smaller than the female. There are
of course some exceptions, though not many; and I am far from denying
them. I will mention certain Anthidia where the male is the larger of
the two. Nevertheless, in the great majority of cases the female has the
advantage.

And this is as it should be. It is the mother, the mother alone, who
laboriously digs underground galleries and chambers, kneads the plaster
for coating the cells, builds the dwelling-house of cement and bits of
grit, bores the wood and divides the burrow into storeys, cuts the disks
of leaf which will be joined together to form honey-pots, works up
the resin gathered in drops from the wounds in the pine-trees to build
ceilings in the empty spiral of a Snail-shell, hunts the prey, paralyses
it and drags it indoors, gathers the pollen-dust, prepares the honey in
her crop, stores and mixes the paste. This severe labour, so imperious
and so active, in which the insect's whole life is spent, manifestly
demands a bodily strength which would be quite useless to the male, the
amorous trifler. Thus, as a general rule, in the insects which carry on
an industry the female is the stronger sex.

Does this pre-eminence imply more abundant provisions during the larval
stage, when the insect is acquiring the physical growth which it will
not exceed in its future development? Simple reflection supplies the
answer: yes, the aggregate growth has its equivalent in the aggregate
provisions. Though so slight a creature as the male Philanthus finds a
ration of two Bees sufficient for his need