The Hunting Wasps 



appetite of the glutton, who crawls heavily 

 along, with his great lumbering belly, amid 

 the scorned leavings: rejected wings and legs 

 and horny abdominal segments. You see her 

 at every moment returning with a recent cap- 

 ture, at every moment setting out again upon 

 the chase. In short, the Bembex brings up 

 her family from day to day, without storing 

 up provisions in advance, just as the bird 

 does, which feeds its nestlings from hand to 

 mouth. Of the many proofs that are evi- 

 dence of this method of upbringing, a very 

 singular method for a Wasp who feeds her 

 offspring on prey, I have already mentioned 

 the presence of the egg in a cell containing no 

 provisions but one small Fly, never more. 

 And here is another one, which can be veri- 

 fied at any time. 



Let us look into the burrow of a Wasp who 

 stocks her grubs' provisions in advance : if we 

 select the moment when the insect is going in 

 with its prey, we shall find in the cell a cer- 

 tain number of victims, the commencement of 

 a larder, but never at that time a grub, nor 

 even an egg, for this is not laid until the pro- 

 visions are quite complete. When the egg 

 is laid, the cell is closed and the mother does 

 not return to it. It is therefore only in bur- 

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