the
non-producers come hastening up to contend for its possession. To one
who amasses there are sometimes five, six or more bent upon his ruin;
and often it ends not merely in robbery but in black murder. The
worker's family, the object of so much care, for whom that home was
built and those provisions stored, succumb, devoured by the intruders,
directly the little bodies have acquired the soft roundness of youth.
Shut up in a cell that is closed on every side, protected by its
silken covering, the grub, once its victuals are consumed, sinks into a
profound slumber, during which the organic changes needed for the future
transformation take place. For this new hatching, which is to turn a
grub into a Bee, for this general remodelling, the delicacy of which
demands absolute repose, all the precautions that make for safety have
been taken.

These precautions will be foiled. The enemy will succeed in penetrating
the impregnable fortress; each foe has his special tactics, contrived
with appalling skill. See, an egg is inserted by means of a probe beside
the torpid larva; or else, in the absence of such an implement, an
infinitesimal grub, an atom, comes creeping and crawling, slips in and
reaches the sleeper, who will never wake again, already a succulent
morsel for her ferocious visitor. The interloper makes the victim's cell
and cocoon his own cell and his own cocoon; and next year, instead of
the mistress of the house, there will come from below ground the bandit
who usurped the dwelling and consumed the occupant.

Look at this one, striped black, white and red, with the figure of a
clumsy, hairy Ant. She explores the slope on foot, inspects every nook
and corner, sounds the soil with her antennae. She is a Mutilla, the
scourge of the cradled grubs. The female has no wings, but, being a
Wasp, she carries a sharp poniard. To novice eyes she would easily pass
for a sort of robust Ant, distinguished from the common ruck by her garb
of staring motley. The male, wide-winged and more gracefully shaped,
hovers incessantly a few inches above the sandy expanse. For hours at a
time, on the same spot, after the manner of the Scolia-wasp he spies
the coming of the females out of the ground. If our watch be patient and
persevering, we shall see the mother, after trotting about for a bit,
stop somewhere and begin to scratch and dig, finally laying bare a
subterranean gallery, of which there was nothing to betray the entrance;
but sh