ition, which for that matter was of no great height, or else had
forced its way through some chink. This is enough, I think, to prove
that the grub is not a strict stay-at-home, as are the larvae of the
Sitares and the Oil-beetles when devouring the ration of the
Anthophora.

I imagine that, in the burrows of the Tachytes, the grub, when its
heap of Mantes is consumed, moves from cell to cell until it has
satisfied its appetite. Its subterranean excursions cannot cover a
wide range, but they enable it to visit a few adjacent cells. I have
mentioned how greatly the Tachytes' provision of Mantes varies.[4] The
smaller rations certainly fall to the males, which are puny dwarfs
compared with their companions; the more plentiful fall to the
females. The parasitic grub to which fate has allotted the scanty
masculine ration has not perhaps sufficient with this share; it wants
an extra portion, which it can obtain by changing its cell. If it be
favoured by chance, it will eat according to the measure of its hunger
and will attain the full development of which its race allows; if it
wander about without finding anything, it will fast and will remain
small. This would explain the differences which I note in both the
grubs and the pseudochrysalids, differences amounting in linear
dimensions to a hundred per cent and more. The rations, rare or
abundant according to the cells lit upon, would determine the size of
the parasite.

[Footnote 4: The essay on the Tachytes has not yet appeared in
English. It will form part of a volume entitled _More Hunting
Wasps_.--_Translator's Note_.]

During the active period, the larva undergoes a few moults; I have
witnessed at least one of these. The creature stripped of its skin
appears as it was before, without any change of form. It instantly
resumes its meal, which was interrupted while the old skin was shed;
it embraces with its legs another Mantis on the heap and proceeds to
nibble her. Whether simple or multiple, this moult has nothing in
common with the renewals due to the hypermetamorphosis, which so
profoundly change the creature's appearance.

Ten days' rearing in the partitioned box is enough to prove how right
I was when I looked upon the parasitic larva feeding on Mantes as the
origin of the pseudochrysalis, the object of my eager attention. The
creature, which I kept supplied with additional food as long as it
accepted it, stops eating at last. It becomes motionless, retracts its