erous megatherium. Well, we are misled by the
scientific label: we have to do with a very paltry insect, smaller than
the common gnat.

There are good people like that, only too happy to serve science with
resounding appellations that might come from Timbuktu; they cannot name
you a midge without striking terror into you. O ye wise and revered
ones, ye christeners of animals, I am willing, in my study, to
make use--but not undue use--of your harsh terminology, with its
conglomeration of syllables; but there is a danger of their leaving the
sanctum and appearing before the public, which is always ready to show
its lack of deference for terms that do not respect its ears. I, wishing
to speak like everybody else, so that I may be understood by all, and
persuaded that science has no need of this Brobdignagian jargon, make a
point of avoiding technical nomenclature when it becomes too barbarous,
when it threatens to lumber the page the moment my pen attempts it. And
so I abandon Monodontomerus.

It is a puny little insect, almost as tiny as the midges whom we see
eddying in a ray of sunshine at the end of autumn. Its dress is golden
bronze; its eyes are coral red. It carries a naked sword, that is to
say, the sheath of its drill stands out slantwise at the tip of its
belly, instead of lying in a hollow groove along the back, as it
does with the Leucospis. This scabbard holds the latter half of the
inoculating filament, which extends below the animal to the base of
the abdomen. In short, its utensil is that of the Leucospis, with this
difference, that its lower half sticks out like a rapier.

This mite that bears a sword upon her rump is yet another persecutor of
the mason bees and not one of the least formidable. She exploits their
nests at the same time as the Leucospis. I see her, like the Leucospis,
slowly explore the ground with her antennae; I see her, like the
Leucospis, bravely drive her dagger into the stone wall. More taken up
with her work, less conscious perhaps of danger, she pays no heed to the
man who is observing her so closely. Where the Leucospis flies, she does
not budge. So great is her assurance that she comes right into my study,
to my work table, and disputes my ownership of the nests whose occupants
I am examining. She operates under my lens, she operates just beside
my forceps. What risk does she run? What can one do to a thing so very
small? She is so certain of her safety that I can take the Mason