XIX THE RETURN TO THE NEST 267 



her attention, but very faintly. She would go a 

 few steps along it, still raking, and then return to 

 the entrance. Two or three times I saw her go 

 the whole length of the gallery and reach the cul- 

 de-sac where the larva should be, do a little careless 

 raking, and hurry back where the entrance used 

 to be, and continue searching with a patience which 

 exhausted mine. More than an hour had passed, 

 and still she sought on the site whence the door had 

 disappeared. 



What would happen in the presence of the larva ? 

 That was the second part of the question. To con- 

 tinue the experiment with the same Bembex would 

 not have offered sufficient guarantee, as the creature, 

 rendered more obstinate by her vain search, seemed 

 possessed by a fixed idea, and this would have 

 interfered with the facts which I wanted to prove. 

 I required a new subject, concerned solely with the 

 impulses of the actual moment. An opportunity 

 soon came. The burrow was uncovered, as I have 

 just said ; but I did not touch the contents ; larva 

 and food were left in their places, — all was in order 

 inside, the roof only was wanting. Well, with this 

 open dwelling, whose every detail the eye could 

 embrace, — vestibule, gallery, cell at the far end, with 

 the grub and its heap of provender, — this dwelling 

 turned into a roofless gallery at the end of which 

 the larva was moving restlessly, under the hot sun, 

 its mother continued the manoeuvres already de- 

 scribed. She alighted just where the entrance had 

 been, and there it was that she hunted about and 

 swept the sand — there that she always returned after 

 some hasty attempt elsewhere in a circuit of a few 



