f a knife and a pair of nippers, I make a side opening, a
window, beneath the dome of Eumenes Amedei and Eumenes pomiformis. I
work with the greatest care, so as not to injure the recluse. Formerly
I attacked the cupola from the top, now I attack it from the side. I
stop when the breach is large enough to allow me to see the state of
things within.

What is this state of things? I pause to give the reader time to
reflect and to think out for himself a means of safety that will
protect the egg and afterwards the grub in the perilous conditions
which I have set forth. Seek, think and contrive, such of you as have
inventive minds. Have you guessed it? Do you give it up? I may as well
tell you.

The egg is not laid upon the provisions; it is hung from the top of the
cupola by a thread which vies with that of a Spider's web for
slenderness. The dainty cylinder quivers and swings to and fro at the
least breath; it reminds me of the famous pendulum suspended from the
dome of the Pantheon to prove the rotation of the earth. The victuals
are heaped up underneath.

Second act of this wondrous spectacle. In order to witness it, we must
open a window in cell upon cell until fortune deigns to smile upon us.
The larva is hatched and already fairly large. Like the egg, it hangs
perpendicularly, by the rear, from the ceiling; but the suspensory cord
has gained considerably in length and consists of the original thread
eked out by a sort of ribbon. The grub is at dinner: head downwards, it
is digging into the limp belly of one of the caterpillars. I touch up
the game that is still intact with a straw. The caterpillars grow
restless. The grub forthwith retires from the fray. And how? Marvel is
added to marvels: what I took for a flat cord, for a ribbon, at the
lower end of the suspensory thread, is a sheath, a scabbard, a sort of
ascending gallery wherein the larva crawls backwards and makes its way
up. The cast shell of the egg, retaining its cylindrical form and
perhaps lengthened by a special operation on the part of the new-born
grub, forms this safety-channel. At the least sign of danger in the
heap of caterpillars, the larva retreats into its sheath and climbs
back to the ceiling, where the swarming rabble cannot reach it. When
peace is restored, it slides down its case and returns to table, with
its head over the viands and its rear upturned and ready to withdraw in
case of need.

Third and last act. Strength has come; the la