248 INSECT LIFE xvm 



feeds them and brings them their rations, and 

 perhaps feels as much tenderness for them as for 

 her own larva. It is a new version of the cuckoo 

 story in yet more singular circumstances. The 

 theory that the cuckoo, almost as big as a sparrow- 

 hawk and coloured like it, should look imposing 

 enough to introduce an egg unresisted into the nest 

 of the weak hedge-sparrow, and that the latter, over- 

 awed perhaps by the alarming look of her toad-faced 

 nursling, should accept and care for the stranger, 

 has something in its favour. But what shall we say 

 of a sparrow which, turning parasite, should go with 

 splendid audacity and intrust her eggs to the eyrie 

 of a bird of prey — the nest of the sparrowhawk 

 itself — the sanguinary devourer of sparrows ? What 

 should we say of the bird of prey who should accept 

 the charge and bring up the brood tenderly ? It is 

 precisely thus that the Bembex acts, — she, a captor of 

 Diptera who yet brings up other Diptera — a huntress 

 who distributes food to a prey whose last repast 

 will be her own disembowelled offspring ! I leave 

 to cleverer people the task of explaining these 

 amazing relations. 



Let us observe the tactics employed by the 

 Tachinid, whose object is to confide her egg to the 

 nest of the miner. It is an invariable rule that the 

 fly should never penetrate into the burrow, even if 

 left open and the owner absent. The crafty parasite 

 would take good care not to entangle itself in a 

 passage, where, having no possibility of flight, it 

 might pay dearly for its effrontery. The only moment 

 for its designs — a moment watched for with the 

 greatest patience — is that when the Hymenopteron 



