184 THE LEAF-CUTTER BEE 



Perhaps it would be wise to regard the inference 

 drawn herein as obiter dictum. The male, no matter 

 what his dimensions, is always allowed to impregnate 

 the female before she devours him. 



If female spiders disgust us by their horrible feasts, 

 poetic justice may be traced in the torments inflicted 

 upon them by certain species of winged insects, a 

 class of creature upon which spiders habitually prey. 

 For instance, there is a species of ichneumon fly 

 (Polysphincta carbonaria) which deposits its egg on 

 the broad back of the garden spider (Epeira), whence 

 the victim is powerless to dislodge it. From the egg is 

 hatched a maggot, which burrows into the spider's body 

 and slowly eats it to death. Other ichneumons deposit 

 their eggs in cocoons of various species of spider ; but 

 they do so at some risk to their own offspring, for if the 

 spider's brood happens to be near hatching and the 

 young spiders come abroad first, instead of being them- 

 selves devoured, they gleefully make a breakfast off 

 ichneumon larvae. 



XXXIII 



Most of us visualise a bee synthetically as a restless 



The Leaf- creature that sucks honey at one end and 



cutter Bee s ti n g s viciously at the other, and we regard 



the race as composed, roughly, of the honey bee and 



two or three different patterns of bumble. In fact, 



however, upwards of fifteen hundred distinct species of 



bee have been classified, and the life histories of those 



that have been studied are of extraordinary interest. 



