a bed have been too much for my nurslings,
whose tender skins are used to the warm moisture of the subsoil. Let us
try another method.

To decide positively whether honey is or is not repugnant to the grubs
of the Philanthus was hardly practicable by the method just explained.
The first meals consisted of flesh, and after that nothing in
particular occurred. The honey is encountered later, when the bee is
largely consumed. If hesitation and repugnance were manifested at this
point they came too late to be conclusive; the sickness of the larvae
might be due to other causes, known or unknown. We must offer honey at
the very beginning, before artificial rearing has spoilt the grub's
appetite. To offer pure honey would, of course, be useless; no
carnivorous creature would touch it, even were it starving. I must
spread the honey on meat; that is, I must smear the dead bee with honey,
lightly varnishing it with a camel's-hair brush.

Under these conditions the problem is solved with the first few
mouthfuls. The grub, having bitten on the honeyed bee, draws back as
though disgusted; hesitates for a long time; then, urged by hunger,
begins again; tries first on one side, then on another; in the end it
refuses to touch the bee again. For a few days it pines upon its
rations, which are almost intact, then dies. As many as are subjected to
the same treatment perish in the same way.

Do they simply die of hunger in the presence of food which their
appetites reject, or are they poisoned by the small amount of honey
absorbed at the first bites? I cannot say; but, whether poisonous or
merely repugnant, the bee smeared with honey is always fatal to them; a
fact which explains more clearly than the unfavourable circumstances of
the former experiment my lack of success with the freshly killed bees.

This refusal to touch honey, whether poisonous or repugnant, is
connected with principles of alimentation too general to be a
gastronomic peculiarity of the Philanthus grub. Other carnivorous
larvae--at least in the series of the Hymenoptera--must share it. Let us
experiment. The method need not be changed. I exhume the larvae when in a
state of medium growth, to avoid the vicissitudes of extreme youth; I
collect the bodies of the grubs and insects which form their natural
diet and smear each body with honey, in which condition I return them to
the larvae. A distinction is apparent: all the larvae are not equally
suited to my experiment.