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Updated: June 14, 2025
But nowhere among the Crustacea is there a mode of development comparable to the "complete metamorphosis" of the Insecta, nowhere among the young or adult Crustacea are there forms which might resemble the maggots of the Diptera or Hymenoptera, the larvae of the Coleoptera, or the caterpillars of the Lepidoptera, still less any bearing even a distant resemblance to the quiescent pupae of these animals.
For instance, we regard the Order Hymenoptera as the most intelligent because most of the social insects are included in it; but it has not yet been proved, probably never will be proved, that the social instincts resulted from intelligence which has "lapsed."
There are tribes in which an inheritance is prepared for the family which will assure it both of food and of shelter in advance. The Hymenoptera in particular are past-masters in the provision of cellars, jars, and other utensils in which the honey-paste destined for the young is stored; they are perfect in the art of excavating storehouses of food for their grubs.
Now man is probably the latest comer of the vertebrates; and in the insect series no species is later than the hymenoptera, unless it be the lepidoptera, which are probably degenerates, living parasitically on flowering plants. So, by different ways, we are led to the same conclusion.
I do not here refer to the number of different species, but to that of the individual insects; for on this it is that the most striking character in the entomology of different countries depends. The orders Orthoptera and Hemiptera are particularly numerous; as likewise is the stinging division of the Hymenoptera the bees, perhaps, being excepted.
Hence it will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds with webbed feet, living on the dry land and rarely alighting on the water, that there should be long-toed corncrakes, living in meadows instead of in swamps; that there should be woodpeckers where hardly a tree grows; that there should be diving thrushes and diving Hymenoptera, and petrels with the habits of auks.
This insect belongs to the order "Hymenoptera," and is of the Ichneumon tribe, being a variety of upward of four hundred species of that interesting fly.
For the rest, if it is not possible to appraise the psychic faculties possessed by the ancestors of existing animals we may at least observe certain facts which put us on the road of explanation. An interesting member of the Hymenoptera, the Sphex, assures food for the early days of the life of its larvæ in a curious way.
Others built up before the opening a series of parallel walls, leaving between them a zigzag corridor through which the Hymenoptera themselves were able to enter. But the intruder was much too long to perform this exercise successfully.
Do we find a similar organ in the other Hymenoptera, whether honey-gatherers or hunters?
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