More Hunting Wasps 



quent is her powerful larva, with its heavy 

 paunch, bent into a hook. I note the pre- 

 sence of a second bearer of the nasal horn, 

 Oryctes Silenus, who is much smaller than 

 her kinswoman, and of Pentodon punctatus, 

 a Scarabaeid who ravages my lettuces. 



But the predominant population consists of 

 Cetonise, or Rosechafers, most of them en- 

 closed in their egg-shaped shells, with earth- 

 en walls encrusted with dung. There are 

 three different species: C. aurata, C. morio 

 and C. floricola. Most of them belong 

 to the first species. Their larvae, which are 

 easily recognized by their singular talent for 

 walking on their backs with their legs in the 

 air, are numbered by the hundred. Every 

 age is represented, from the new-born grub 

 to the podgy larva on the point of building 

 its shell. 



This time the problem of the victuals is 

 solved. When I compare the larval slough 

 sticking to the Scolia's cocoons with the 

 Cetonia-larvae or, better, with the skin cast 

 by these larvae, under cover of the cocoon, 

 at the moment of the nymphal transforma- 

 tion, I establish an absolute identity. The 

 Two-banded Scolia rations each of her eggs 

 with a Cetonia-grub. Behold the riddle 

 which my irksome searches in the Bois des 

 48 



