the Sitares live. But
this Bee is not very common in the neighbourhood of Avignon; and my
engagements at the college[1] do not allow me to absent myself for the
purpose of repairing to Carpentras, where she is so abundant. In
hunting for cells provisioned with honey I thus lose a good part of
the month of May; however, I end by finding some which are newly
sealed and which belong to the right Anthophora. I open these cells
with the feverish impatience of a sorely-tried longing. All goes well:
they are half-full of fluid, dark, nauseating honey, with the Bee's
lately-hatched larva floating on the surface. This larva is removed;
and taking a thousand precautions, I lay one or more Sitares on the
surface of the honey. In other cells I leave the Bee's larva and
insert Sitares, placing them sometimes on the honey and sometimes on
the inner wall of the cell or simply at the entrance. Lastly, all the
cells thus prepared are put in glass tubes, which enable me to observe
them readily, without fear of disturbing my famished guests at their
meal.

[Footnote 1: Fabre, as a young man, was a master at Avignon College.
Cf. _The Life of the Fly_: chaps. xii., xiii., xix. and
xx.--_Translator's Note_.]

But what am I saying? Their meal? There is no meal! The Sitares,
placed at the entrance to a cell, far from seeking to make their way
in, leave it and go roaming about the glass tube; those which have
been placed on the inner surface of the cells, near the honey, emerge
precipitately, half-caught in the glue and tripping at every step;
lastly, those which I thought I had favoured the most, by placing them
on the honey itself, struggle, become entangled in the sticky mass and
perish in it, suffocated. Never did experiment break down so
completely! Larvae, nymphs, cells, honey: I have offered you them all!
Then what do you want, you fiendish little creatures?

Tired of all these fruitless attempts, I ended where I ought to have
begun: I went to Carpentras. But it was too late: the Anthophora had
finished her work; and I did not succeed in seeing anything new.
During the course of the year I learnt from Leon Dufour,[2] to whom I
had spoken of the Sitares, that the tiny creature which he had found
on the Andrenae[3] and described under the generic name of
Triungulinus, was recognized later by Newport[4] as the larva of a
Meloe, or Oil-beetle. Now it so happened that I had found a few
Oil-beetles in the cells of the same Anthophora that