se of the rest. In vain do
I consult my memory and my notes: my long entomological career does
not furnish me with a solitary example of such a misdeed as that of an
insect leading the life of a parasite upon its fellows.

When the Chalicodoma of the Sheds works, in her thousands, at her
Cyclopean edifice, each has her own home, a sacred home where not one
of the tumultuous swarm, except the proprietress, dreams of taking
a mouthful of honey. It is as though there were a neighbourly
understanding to respect the others' rights. Moreover, if some heedless
one mistakes her cell and so much as alights on the rim of a cup that
does not belong to her, forthwith the owner appears, admonishes her
severely and soon calls her to order. But, if the store of honey is the
estate of some deceased Bee, or of some wanderer unduly prolonging her
absence, then--and then alone--a kinswoman seizes upon it. The goods
were waste property, which she turns to account; and it is a very proper
economy. The other Bees and Wasps behave likewise: never, I say never,
do we find among them an idler assiduously planning the conquest of her
neighbour's possessions. No insect is a parasite on its own species.

What then is parasitism, if one must look for it among animals of
different races? Life in general is but a vast brigandage. Nature
devours herself; matter is kept alive by passing from one stomach into
another. At the banquet of life, each is in turn the guest and the dish;
the eater of to-day becomes the eaten of tomorrow; hodie tibi, cras
mihi. Everything lives on that which lives or has lived; everything is
parasitism. Man is the great parasite, the unbridled thief of all that
is fit to eat. He steals the milk from the Lamb, he steals the honey
from the children of the Bee, even as the Melecta pilfers the pottage
of the Anthophora's sons. The two cases are similar. Is it the vice of
indolence? No, it is the fierce law which for the life of the one exacts
the death of the other.

In this implacable struggle of devourers and devoured, of pillagers and
pillaged, of robbers and robbed, the Melecta deserves no more than we
the title of ignoble; in ruining the Anthophora, she is but imitating
man in one detail, man who is the infinite source of destruction. Her
parasitism is no blacker than ours: she has to feed her offspring;
and, possessing no harvesting-tools, ignorant besides of the art of
harvesting, she uses the provisions of others who are