Note 7 — Chapter x · THE SPANISH COPRIS: THE HABITS OF THE MOTHER

I have described elsewhere7 the brutality with which the Bee, that most gifted of insects, treats the eggs of her fellows. Osmiæ, Chalicodomæ and others perpetrate atrocities at times. In a moment of vengeance or of that inexplicable aberration which occurs after the laying is finished, a sister’s egg, savagely torn from the cell with the pincers of the mandibles, is flung into the dust-bin. The thing is pitilessly crushed, is ripped open, is even eaten. How different from the good-natured Copris!