Ill CERCERIS BUPRESTICIDA 49 



insist on this comparison between the instinct of the 

 animal and the reason of the sage in order the better 

 to demonstrate in due time the overwhelming superi- 

 ority of the former. 



I will add but a few words to the history of the 

 C. bupresticida. This Hymenopteron, common in the 

 Landes, as we have heard, seems to be rare in the 

 department of Vaucluse. It is only at long in- 

 tervals that I have met with it, in autumn, and 

 always isolated specimens, on the spiny heads of 

 Eryngium campestre, in the environs of Avignon or 

 round Orange and Carpentras. In the latter spot, 

 so favourable to burrowing hymenoptera, from its 

 sandy soil of Mollasse, I had the good fortune, 

 not indeed of being present at the exhumation of 

 such entomological riches as L^on Dufour describes, 

 but of finding some old nests which I feel certain 

 belonged to Cerceris bupresticida, from the shape of 

 the cocoons, the kind of provender stored up, and 

 the existence of the Hymenopteron in the neighbour- 

 hood. These nests, hollowed in a very friable sand- 

 stone, called safre in those parts, were filled with 

 remains of beetles, easily recognised, and consisting 

 of detached wing-cases, empty corslets, and whole 

 feet. Now these remains of the larva's feast all 

 belonged to one species, and this was a Buprestis, 

 Sphaenoptera geminata. Thus from the west to the 

 east of France, from the department of the Landes 

 to Vaucluse, the Cerceris remains faithful to its 

 favourite prey ; longitude does not affect its pre- 

 dilections, a hunter of Buprestids among the mari- 

 time pines of the ocean sand-hills, it is equally so 

 amid the evergreen oaks and olives of Provence, 



