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 little bird would dare to enter the murky 

 cave, even if the entrance were 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. 1 Flat below, convex above 

 and of a lustrous white, these dots resemble 



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



255 



