The Theory of Parasitism 



thing, the egg, with her brutal mandibles; 

 she rips it open and goes and flings it away. 

 She does worse: she eats it on the spot. I 

 had to witness this horror many times over 

 before I could accept it as a fact. Note that 

 the egg devoured may very well contain the 

 criminal's own offspring. Imperiously swayed 

 by the needs of her present family, the Osmia 

 puts her past family entirely out of her mind. 



Having perpetrated this child-murder, the 

 depraved creature does a little provisioning. 

 They all experience the same necessity to go 

 backwards in the sequence of actions in order 

 to pick up the thread of their interrupted oc- 

 cupations. Her next work is to lay her egg 

 and then she conscientiously restores the de- 

 molished lid. 



The havoc can be more sweeping still. One 

 of these laggards is not satisfied with a single 

 cell; she needs two, three, four. To reach the 

 most remote, the Osmia wrecks all those 

 which comes before it. The partitions are 

 broken down, the eggs are eaten or thrown 

 away, the provisions are swept outside, are 

 often even carried to a distance in great 

 lumps. Covered with dust from the loose 

 plaster of the demolition, floured all over 

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