toiling away at its business, even when there is nothing useful left to
do. This worker knows no rest but death.

I have said enough about the dwelling of the Diadem Anthidium; let us
look at the inhabitant and her provisions. The honey is pale-yellow,
homogeneous and of a semifluid consistency, which prevents it from
trickling through the porous cotton bag. The egg floats on the surface
of the heap, with the end containing the head dipped into the paste. To
follow the larva through its progressive stages is not without interest,
especially on account of the cocoon, which is one of the most singular
that I know. With this object in view, I prepare a few cells that lend
themselves to observation. I take a pair of scissors, slice a piece off
the side of the cotton-wool purse, so as to lay bare both the victuals
and the consumer, and place the ripped cell in a short glass tube.
During the first few days, nothing striking happens. The little grub,
with its head still plunged in the honey, slakes its thirst with long
draughts and waxes fat. A moment comes...But let us go back a little
farther, before broaching this question of sanitation.

Every grub, of whatever kind, fed on provisions collected by the mother
and placed in a narrow cell is subject to conditions of health unknown
to the roving grub that goes where it likes and feeds itself on what it
can pick up. The first, the recluse, is no more able than the second,
the gadabout, to solve the problem of a food which can be entirely
assimilated, without leaving an unclean residue. The second gives no
thought to these sordid matters: any place suits it for getting rid
of that difficulty. But what will the other do with its waste matter,
cooped up as it is in a tiny cell stuffed full of provisions? A most
unpleasant mixture seems inevitable. Picture the honey-eating grub
floating on liquid provisions and fouling them at intervals with its
excretions! The least movement of the hinder-part would cause the
whole to amalgamate; and what a broth that would make for the delicate
nursling! No, it cannot be; those dainty epicures must have some method
of escaping these horrors.

They all have, in fact, and most original methods at that. Some take
the bull by the horns, so to speak, and, in order not to soil things,
refrain from uncleanliness until the end of the meal: they keep the
dropping-trap closed as long as the victuals are unfinished. This is
a radical scheme, but not in