46 INSECT LIFE iii 



earth, so that when once the provisions for the brood are 

 laid in, the cells have no communication with the outside. 



Cerceris bupresticida must be an indefatigable, daring, and 

 skilful huntress. The cleanness, the freshness of the beetles 

 which .she buries in her den testify that they are seized just 

 as they emerge from the wooden galleries where their final 

 metamorphosis takes place. But what inconceivable in- 

 stinct urges a creature that lives solely on the nectar of 

 flowers to seek amid a thousand difficulties animal food 

 for carnivorous offspring, which it will never see, and to 

 post itself on trees quite unlike one another, which hide 

 deep in their trunks the insects which are to fall her 

 victims ? What entomological tact, yet more inconceiv- 

 able, makes her lay down a strict law to select them in a 

 single generic group, and to catch species differing very 

 considerably in size, shape, and colour? You observe 

 how unlike are Buprestis biguttata, with its slender long 

 body and dark colour; B. octoguttata, oval-oblong, wdth 

 great stains of a beautiful yellow on a blue or green 

 ground ; and B. micans, three or four times the size of 

 B. biguttata, with a splendid metallic greeny gold. 



There is another very singular fact in the manoeuvres 

 of our assassin of Buprestids. The buried ones, like those 

 which I have seized in the grasp of their murderers, give 

 no sign of life, and are unquestionably quite dead, yet, as 

 I observed with surprise, no matter when they are dug up, 

 not only do they keep all their freshness of colour, but 

 every bit of them — feet, antennae, palpi, and the membranes 

 which unite the various parts of their bodies — is perfectly 

 supple and flexible. At first one supposes the explanation, 

 as far as concerns the buried ones, to be in the coolness 

 of the ground, and absence of air and light, and for those 

 taken from their murderers, in the very recent date of 

 death. But observe that after my explorations, having 

 isolated in cones of paper the numerous Buprestids dug 

 up, I have often left them over thirty-six hours before 

 pinning them out. And yet, notwithstanding the dryness 

 and great heat ot July, I have always found the same 



