he Anthophora. In order that the insect, if it so desire, may
enter this artificial corridor, I lay the bottle horizontally.

The female, painfully dragging her big abdomen, perambulates all the
nooks and corners of her makeshift dwelling, exploring them with her
palpi, which she passes everywhere. After half an hour of groping and
careful investigation, she ends by selecting the horizontal gallery
dug in the cork. She thrusts her abdomen into this cavity and, with
her head hanging outside, begins her laying. Not until thirty-six
hours later was the operation completed; and during this incredible
lapse of time the patient creature remained absolutely motionless.

The eggs are white, oval and very small. They measure barely
two-thirds of a millimetre[8] in length. They stick together slightly
and are piled in a shapeless heap which might be likened to a
good-sized pinch of the unripe seeds of some orchid. As for their
number, I will admit that it tried my patience to no purpose. I do
not, however, believe that I am exaggerating when I estimate it as at
least two thousand. Here are the data on which I base this figure: the
laying, as I have said, lasts thirty-six hours; and my frequent visits
to the female working in the cavity in the cork convinced me that
there was no perceptible interruption in the successive emission of
the eggs. Now less than a minute elapses between the arrival of one
egg and that of the next; and the number of these eggs cannot
therefore be lower than the number of minutes contained in thirty-six
hours, or 2160. But the exact number is of no importance: we need only
note that it is very large, which implies, for the young larvae
issuing from the eggs, very numerous chances of destruction, since so
lavish a supply of germs is necessary to maintain the species in the
requisite proportions.

[Footnote 8: .026 inch.--_Translator's Note_.]

Enlightened by these observations and informed of the shape, the
number and the arrangement of the eggs, I searched the galleries of
the Anthophorae for those which the Sitares had laid there and
invariably found them gathered in a heap inside the galleries, at a
distance of an inch or two from the orifice, which is always open to
the outer world. Thus, contrary to what one was to some extent
entitled to suppose, the eggs are not laid in the cells of the pioneer
Bee; they are simply dumped in a heap inside the entrance to her
dwelling. Nay more, the mother does n