inally the property of the weakest of the three.

[Footnote 4: Cf. _The Mason-bees_: chaps. viii. and ix.--_Translator's
Note_.]

And who shall say whether the Meloe, in its turn, will not be
dispossessed by a fresh thief; or even whether it will not, in the
state of a drowsy, fat and flabby larva, fall a prey to some marauder
who will munch its live entrails? As we meditate upon this deadly,
implacable struggle which nature imposes, for their preservation, on
these different creatures, which are by turns possessors and
dispossessed, devourers and devoured, a painful impression mingles
with the wonder aroused by the means employed by each parasite to
attain its end; and, forgetting for a moment the tiny world in which
these things happen, we are seized with terror at this concatenation
of larceny, cunning and brigandage which forms part, alas, of the
designs of _alma parens rerum_!

The young Meloe-larvae established in the down of the Anthophorae or
in that of the Melecta- and the Coelioxys-bees, their parasites, had
adopted an infallible means of sooner or later reaching the desired
cell. Was it, so far as they were concerned, a choice dictated by the
foresight of instinct, or just simply the result of a lucky chance?
The question was soon decided. Various Flies--Drone-flies and
Bluebottles (_Eristalis tenax_ and _Calliphora vomitoria_)--would
settle from time to time on the groundsel- or camomile-flowers
occupied by the young Meloes and stop for a moment to suck the sweet
secretions. On all these Flies, with very few exceptions, I found
Meloe-larvae, motionless in the silky down of the thorax. I may also
mention, as infested by these larvae, an Ammophila (_A. hirsuta_),[5]
who victuals her burrows with a caterpillar in early spring, while her
kinswomen build their nests in autumn. This Wasp merely grazes, so to
speak, the surface of a flower; I catch her; there are Meloes moving
about her body. It is clear that neither the Drone-flies nor the
Bluebottles, whose larvae live in putrefying matter, nor yet the
Ammophilae who victual theirs with caterpillars, could ever have
carried the larvae which invaded them into cells filled with honey.
These larvae therefore had gone astray; and instinct, as does not
often happen, was here at fault.

[Footnote 5: For the Wasp known as the Hairy Ammophila, who feeds her
young on the Grey Worm, the caterpillar of the Turnip Moth, cf. _The
Hunting Wasps_, chaps. xviii. to xx.--_Tr