The Volucella 



trary to their habit, numbers of Nightingales 

 are living on friendly terms in a cluster of 

 bushes, in order to be near the hives and to 

 have a larger share in the morning di- 

 stribution 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 bur- 

 row 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 dar- 

 ing; the Fly is called for and her maggot, the 

 king of the departed. What the Green- 

 bottles, Bluebottles and Flesh-flies 1 do in the 

 open air, at the expense of every kind of 

 corpse, other Flies, narrowing their province, 

 do underground 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, oval 

 dots, firmly fixed to the brown paper and 

 measuring roughly one-tenth of an inch long 

 by one-sixteenth of an inch wide. Flat 



1 Cf. The Life of the Fly: chaps, ix., x. and xiv. to xvi. 

 Translator's Note. 



291 



