. Natural history. Zoology. 574 INSECTAâORDER HYMENOPTERA. excrescences called galls on various plants, especially on the oak and rose though many of the smaller species are parasitic ; the groups Habits. generally classed together roughly as ichneumons, though they really include several very distinct families, are parasitic on other insects ; the burrowing and solitary wasps are carnivorous, the social wasps and the ants are omnivorous, and the bees feed on the pollen and honey of flowers. The ants, bees, and wasps, and the termites, or white ants, which greatly resemble them, but which belo
. Natural history. Zoology. 574 INSECTAâORDER HYMENOPTERA. excrescences called galls on various plants, especially on the oak and rose though many of the smaller species are parasitic ; the groups Habits. generally classed together roughly as ichneumons, though they really include several very distinct families, are parasitic on other insects ; the burrowing and solitary wasps are carnivorous, the social wasps and the ants are omnivorous, and the bees feed on the pollen and honey of flowers. The ants, bees, and wasps, and the termites, or white ants, which greatly resemble them, but which belong to the order Neuroptera, far surpass all other animals in intelligence, and are the only creatures known to scientific men which have developed any phases of social life and civilisation at all resembling our own, and this is especially true of the ants. The Hymenoptera are probaVjly the most numerous of all insects in number of species, for although only 36,000 species have yet been described, a much smaller number than either the Coleoptera or Lepidoptera, yet Number of we have considerably more than 3,000 species in England, a Species. greater number than is known of any other order, and fully half of these belong to the parasitic groups, which only one or two entomologists have taken the trouble to study at all, and many of which are of very small size, some, indeed, being the most minute of all known insects, and there is no reason to doubt their being proportionately as numerous in other countries as in our own. The Hymenoptera are divided into two principal sections : the Terebrantia, or Boring Hymenoptera, in which the ovipositor is modified into a boring . apparatus; and the Aculeata, or Stinging Hymenoptera, in ^'^^^tefâ¢*'^ which it is modified into a sting. In the Terebrantia the irp \ r \ trochanter, or small hinge-joint which separates the coxa, or hip, from the femur, or thigh, is generally double, while in the Aculeata it is generally single ; but this is
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