It is the natural instinct not simply of procreating their species, but of laying by a provision for their expected offspring.

What a lesson to mankind! what an example to the nurtured mind of mail from one of the lowest classes of living things! Here we see no rash matrimonial engagements; no penniless lovers selfishly and indissolubly linked together to propagate large families Of starving children.

Ail the arrangements of the insect tribe, though prompted by sheer instinct are conducted with a degree of rationality that in some cases raises the mere instinct of the creeping thing above the assumed "reason" of man.
The bird builds her nest and carefully provides for the comfort of her young long ere she lays her fragile egg.

Even look at that vulgar-looking beetle, whose coarse form would banish the idea of any rational feeling existing in its brain--the Billingsgate fish-woman of its tribe in coarseness and rudeness of exterior (Scarabaeus carnifex)--see with what quickness she is running backward, raised almost upon her head, while with her bind legs she trundles a large ball; herself no bigger than a nutmeg, the ball is four times the size.
There she goes along the smooth road.

The ball she has just manufactured from some fresh-dropped horse-dung; it is as round as though turned by a lathe, and, although the dung has not lain an hour upon the ground, she and her confederates have portioned out the spoil, and each has started off with her separate ball.