ot make any protective structure
for them; she takes no pains to shield them from the rigours of
winter; she does not even attempt, by stopping for a short distance,
as best she can, the entrance-lobby in which she has laid them, to
protect them from the thousand enemies that threaten them; for, as
long as the frosts of winter have not arrived, these open galleries
are trodden by Spiders, by Acari, by Anthrenus-grubs and other
plunderers, to whom these eggs, or the young larvae about to emerge
from them, must be a dainty feast. In consequence of the mother's
heedlessness, the number of those who escape all these voracious
hunters and the inclemencies of the weather must be curiously small.
This perhaps explains why she is compelled to make up by her fecundity
for her deficient industry.

The hatching occurs a month later, about the end of September or the
beginning of October. The season being still propitious, I was led to
suppose that the young larvae must at once make a start and disperse,
in order that each might seek to gain access, through some
imperceptible fissure, to an Anthophora-cell. This presumption turned
out to be entirely at fault. In the boxes in which I had placed the
eggs laid by my captives, the young larvae, little black creatures at
most a twenty-fifth of an inch long, did not move away, provided
though they were with vigorous legs; they remained higgledy-piggledy
with the white skins of the eggs whence they had emerged.

In vain I placed within their reach lumps of earth containing nests of
the Anthophora, open cells, larvae and nymphs of the Bee: nothing was
able to tempt them; they persisted in forming, with the egg-skins, a
powdery heap of speckled black and white. It was only by drawing the
point of a needle through this pinch of living dust that I was able to
provoke an active wriggling. Apart from this, all was still. If I
forcibly removed a few larvae from the common heap, they at once
hurried back to it, in order to hide themselves among the rest.
Perhaps they had less reason to fear the cold when thus collected and
sheltered beneath the egg-skins. Whatever may be the motive that
impels them to remain thus gathered in a heap, I recognized that none
of the means suggested by my imagination succeeded in forcing them to
abandon the little spongy mass formed by the skins of the eggs, which
were slightly glued together. Lastly, to assure myself that the
larvae, in the free state, do not dispe