XIX THE RETURN TO THE NEST 269 



venison exhaled from the heap of Diptera, she came 

 occasionally as far as the end of the gallery, the 

 very spot where lay the larva. Mother and son had 

 met. At this moment of reunion after long anxiety, 

 were there earnest solicitude, sign of tenderness, 

 or of maternal joy ? Whoever thinks so has only 

 to repeat my experiment to convince himself of the 

 contrary. The Bembex did not recognise her larva 

 at all ; it was a worthless thing, in her way, — nothing 

 but an embarrassment. She walked over it and 

 trampled it unheeding, as she hurried backwards and 

 forwards. If she wanted to dig at the bottom of 

 the cell, she rudely kicked it behind her, — pushed, 

 upset, expelled it, as she might have treated a large 

 bit of gravel which got in her way while at work. 

 Thus maltreated, the larva bethought itself of de- 

 fence. I have seen it seize her by one tarsus with 

 no more ceremony than she would have shown in 

 biting the foot of a Dipteron caught by her. The 

 struggle was sharp, but at last the fierce mandibles 

 let go, and the mother flew wildly away with her 

 sharpest hum. This unnatural scene of the son 

 biting the mother, and perhaps even trying to eat 

 her, is unusual, and brought about by circum- 

 stances which the observer is not always able to 

 conjure up. What one can always witness is the 

 profound indifference of the Hymenopteron for its 

 offspring, and the brutal disdain with which that 

 inconvenient heap, the grub, is treated. Once she 

 has raked out the far end of the passage, which is 

 done in a moment, the Bembex returns to her 

 favourite point, the threshold, to resume her useless 

 researches. As for the grub, it continues to struggle 



