The Glow- Worm and Other Beetles 



the banks inhabited by the Anthophora. At 

 this period all is silent near the nests; the 

 work has long been completed; and numbers 

 of Spiders' webs line the crevices or plunge 

 their silken tubes into the Bee's corridors. 

 Let us not, however, hastily abandon the city 

 once so populous, so full of life and bustle 

 and no\7 deserted. A few inches below the 

 surface, thousands of larvae and nymphs, im- 

 prisoned in their cells of clay, are resting 

 until the coming spring. Might not such a 

 succulent prey as these larvae, paralysed and 

 incapable of defence, tempt certain parasites 

 who are industrious enough to attain them? 

 Here indeed are some Flies clad in a dis- 

 mal livery, half-black, half-white, a species 

 of Anthrax {A. sinuata) / flying indolently 

 from gallery to gallery, doubtless with the 

 object of laying their eggs there; and here 

 are others, more numerous, whose mission is 

 fulfilled and who, having died in harness, are 

 hanging dry and shrivelled in the Spiders' 

 webs. Elsewhere the entire surface of a per- 

 pendicular bank is hung with the dried 

 corpses of a Beetle (Sitaris humeralis), 

 slung, like the Flies, in the silken meshes of 



1 Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, translated 

 by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, ii. and iv. — 

 Translator's Note. 



30 



