INSECTS I HAVE WATCHED 



111 



to get entangled among the hairs on the Bee's body, so as to be 

 carried along to the latter's home. Having arrived there safely, 

 the Meloe grub bides its time, until the Bee deposits a supply 

 of tasty food for the sustenance of a Bee grub yet to be, and the 

 hymenopterous insect is so occupied at the cell that it does not 

 notice the grub of the Oil Beetle craftily slip into the cell in which 

 an egg of the Bee is already deposited. Then the Bee seals up 

 the cradle. This is Meloe' s opportunity, for it at once eats the 

 Bee's egg out of the way, so as itself to become the sole tenant of 

 the hexagonal nursery. A further food supply is near at hand, 



FIG. 48. OIL BEETLE. 



and this is greedily devoured until such time as the Oil Beetle 

 grub is ready to pupate, which operation is performed in the 

 Bee's cell. In due course Meloe emerges as a perfect Beetle, 

 and by tearing away the sealed cap of the cell, operated by means 

 of the strong jaws, it is soon able to find its way out of the Bee's 

 citadel, and is then ready to forage along the sunny southern 

 bank, where earlier in life it awaited the Bee's coming. 



Field Crickets sing to me in our Hertfordshire hedgerows 

 and grassy meadows when I am cycling, or walking, home of a 

 Summer evening. I know exactly where to find them in the 

 season of the year, and thereby hangs a tale which may now be 

 told. 



A note in a local contemporary was to the effect that, when 

 giving a lecture entitled " What Shakespeare saw in Nature," 

 Sir Edward Sullivan said that the writer of an anonymous article 

 in the Quarterly Review several years ago was wrong in all his 



