The Bumble-Bee Fly 



living on friendly terms in a cluster of bushes, 

 in order to be near the hive and to have a 

 larger share in the morning distribution of 

 plump dainties. 



In the same way, the Nightingale and his 

 gastronomical rivals would haunt the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Wasps' nests, if the dead 

 grubs were cast out on the surface of the soil; 

 but these delicacies fall inside the burrow and 

 no httle bird would dare to enter the murky 

 cave, even if the entrance w^ere not too small 

 to admit it. Other consumers are needed here, 

 small in size and great in daring; the Fly is 

 called for and her maggot, the king of the 

 departed. What the Greenbottles, the Blue- 

 bottles and the Flesh-flies do in the open air, 

 at the expense of every kind of corpse, other 

 Flies, narrowing their province, do under- 

 ground at the Wasps' expense. 



Let us turn our attention, in September, to 

 the wrapper of a Wasps' nest. On the outer 

 surface and there alone, this wrapper is strewn 

 with a multitude of big, white, elliptical dots, 

 firmly fixed to the brown paper and measuring 

 about two millimetres and a half long by one 

 and a half wide.^ Flat below, convex above 

 and of a lustrous white, these dots resemble 



^About .1 by .06 of an inch. — Translator's Note. 

 255 



