stepped a tiny chalcid into the light of day, its 

 dapper little person shining blue-black and its 

 minute wings of an iridescent green. 



You may see many broken twigs of sumac, elder 

 and blackberry, perforated at the end in evidence 

 that in the cells below are the larvze of a bee, or 

 perhaps the pups wrapped in their transforming 

 slumbers. This sepulcher is sign to the chalcid 

 fly as well. In one such that I opened were 

 several perfeft bees, beautiful little green creatures. 

 Immediately they stepped out upon my hand and 

 began dusting and cleaning themselves, but ap- 

 peared to be troubled by the brightness, and eager 

 to hide. When offered the open end of a tube, 

 such as they had recently come from, they seemed 

 glad to enter. They were not yet fitted for contact 

 with the world of light and preferred to return to 

 the darkness and security of their cells. A spider 

 had concealed herself in a silken room at the 

 mouth of one tube, perhaps seeking this privacy 

 in which to change her skin. When their time had 

 come to emerge, the inmates would naturally have 

 walked into the spider's den, while the light of day 

 appeared beyond, but for a single instant, as a faint 

 glimmer which they were destined never to reach. 



83 



