12 The Hunting Wasps 



and a dark colour ; B. octoguUata, oval-oblong, 

 with great patches of a beautiful yellow on a blue 

 or green ground ; and B. micans, who is three 

 or four times the size of B. higuttata and glitters 

 with a metallic lustre of a fine golden green. 



* There is another very singular fact about 

 the manoeuvres of our Buprestis-slayer. The 

 buried Buprestes, like those whom I have 

 seized in the grasp of their kidnappers, are 

 always deprived of any sign of life ; in a word, 

 they are decidedly dead. I was surprised to 

 remark that, no matter when these corpses 

 were dug up, they not only preserved all their 

 freshness of colouring, but their legs, antennae, 

 palpi, and the membranes uniting the various 

 parts of the body remained perfectly supple and 

 flexible. There was no mutilation, no apparent 

 wound to be seen. One might at first believe 

 the reason, in the case of the buried ones, to 

 be due to the coolness of the bowels of the 

 earth, in the absence of air and light ; and, in 

 the case of those taken from the kidnappers, to 

 the very recent date of their death. But please 

 observe that, at the time of my explorations, 

 after placing the numerous exhumed Buprestes 

 in separate screws of paper, I often left them in 

 their little bags for thirty-six hours before 

 pinning them out. Well, notwithstanding the 

 dryness of the air and the burning July heat, 



