o abdominal segments, the legs and
the tarsi a rusty red. Clad in the same livery and much smaller than the
female, the male is remarkable for his eyes, which are of a beautiful
lemon-yellow when he is alive. The length is nearly half an inch for the
female and a little more than half this for the male.--Author's Note.)
I do not think that she is very widely distributed. I made her
acquaintance in the Serignan woods, where she inhabits, or rather used
to inhabit--for I fear that I have depopulated and even destroyed the
community by my repeated excavations--where she used to inhabit one of
those little mounds of sand which the wind heaps up against the rosemary
clumps. Outside this small community, I never saw her again. Her
history, rich in incident, will be given with all the detail which
it deserves. I will confine myself for the moment to mentioning her
rations, which consist of Mantis-larvae, those of the Praying Mantis
predominating. (Cf. "The Life of the Grasshopper": chapters 6 to
9.--Translator's Note.) My lists record from three to sixteen heads for
each cell. Once again we note a great inequality of rations, the reason
for which we must try to discover.

What shall I say of the Black Tachytes (T. nigra, VAN DER LIND) that I
have not already said in telling the story of the Yellow-winged Sphex?
("The Hunting Wasps": chapters 4 to 6.--Translator's Note.) I have there
described her contests with the Sphex, whose burrow she seems to me
to have usurped; I show her dragging along the ruts in the roads a
paralysed Cricket, seized by the hauling-ropes, his antennae; I speak of
her hesitations, which lead me to suspect her for a homeless vagabond,
and finally on her surrender of her game, with which she seems at once
satisfied and embarrassed. Save for the dispute with the Sphex, an
unique event in my records as observer, I have seen all the rest many
a time, but never anything more. The Black Tachytes, though the most
frequent of all in my neighbourhood, remains a riddle to me. I
know nothing of her dwelling, her larvae, her cocoons, her
family-arrangements. All that I can affirm, judging by the invariable
nature of the prey which one sees her dragging along, is that she must
feed her larvae on the same non-adult Cricket that the Yellow-winged
Sphex chooses for hers.

Is she a poacher, a pillager of other's property, or a genuine huntress?
My suspicions are persistent, though I know how chary a man should be of
sus