CREATION BY EVOLUTION
this wonderful socialistic life come about? How has it been evolved? How can we discover the steps in its evolution? We can trace the social bees and wasps back to solitary bees and wasps, and we can trace a steady growth of complexity in the habits of life of these solitary insects and in the complexity of their homes until we reach the stage that is briefly described above.
_p194_nests_of_carpenter_bee.png)
One of the characteristics of the bee, as anyone can observe, is a hairy body. The body is so completely covered with hair that it has a furry appearance. Now the simplest form of bee, which has no common English name but is known scientificially as Prosopis, has hardly any hair. Its tongue is rudimentary, its hind legs are not adapted for collecting pollen, as are those of the honey-bee, and it does not lead a social life. It makes separate cells, each lined with a silken membrane, in the stems of such plants as brambles (Fig. 10) ; or it burrows in the earth, or even in the mortar of walls. It collects little if any pollen and it stores in its separate cells a very weak honey, in which the egg is
[ 194 ]
