178 FABRE'S BOOK OF INSECTS 



gallery. The sad-coloured Fly has five or six weeks before 

 her wherein to explore the clay nests amid the thyme and to 

 take her small share of the joys of life. 



Ill 

 THE WAY IN 



If you have paid attention to this story of the Anthrax 

 Fly, you must have noticed that it is incomplete. The Fox 

 in the fable saw how the Lion's visitors entered his den, but 

 did not see how they went out. With us the case is reversed : 

 we know the way out of the Mason-bee's fortress, but we do 

 not know the way in. To leave the cell whose owner it has 

 eaten, the Anthrax becomes a boring-tool. When the exit- 

 tunnel is opened this tool splits like a pod bursting in the sun, 

 and from the strong framework there escapes a dainty Fly, 

 a soft bit of fluff that contrasts strangely with the roughness 

 of the prison whence it comes. On this point we know pretty 

 well what there is to know. But the entrance of the grub 

 into the cell puzzled me for a quarter of a century. 



It is plain that the mother cannot place her egg in the Bee's 

 cell, which is closed and barricaded with a cement wall. To 

 pierce it she would have to become a boring-tool once more, 

 and get into the cast-off rags which she left at the doorway of 

 the exit-tunnel. She would have to become a pupa again. 

 For the full-grown Fly has no claws, nor mandibles, nor any 

 implement capable of working its way through the wall. 



Can it be, then, the grub that makes its own way into the 

 storeroom, that same grub that we have seen sucking the 

 life out of the Bee's larva ? Let us call the creature to mind : 

 a little oily sausage, which stretches and curls up just where 

 it lies, without being able to shift its position. Its body is a 

 smooth cylinder, its mouth a circular lip. It has no means 

 whatever of moving ; not even a hair or a wrinkle to enable 

 it to crawl. It can do nothing but digest its food. It is even 



