ttonous companions, without
otherwise molesting him, deprive him of the best of everything. The
wretched starveling dwindles, shrivels up and soon disappears from view.
His corpse, a mere atom, blended with the remaining provisions, supplies
the maggots with one mouthful the more.

And what does the Halictus mother do in this disaster? She is free to
visit her grubs at any moment; she has but to put her head into the
passage of the house: she cannot fail to be apprised of their distress.
The squandered loaf, the swarming mass of vermin tell their own tale.
Why does she not take the intruders by the skin of the abdomen? To grind
them to powder with her mandibles, to fling them out of doors were
the business of a second. And the foolish creature never thinks of it,
leaves the ravagers in peace!

She does worse. When the time of the nymphosis comes, the Halictus
mother goes to the cells rifled by the parasite and closes them with an
earthen plug as carefully as she does the rest. This final barricade, an
excellent precaution when the cot is occupied by an Halictus in course
of metamorphosis, becomes the height of absurdity when the Gnat
has passed that way. Instinct does not hesitate in the face of this
ineptitude: it seals up emptiness. I say, emptiness, because the crafty
maggot hastens to decamp the instant that the victuals are consumed, as
though it foresaw an insuperable obstacle for the coming Fly: it quits
the cell before the Bee closes it.

To rascally guile the parasite adds prudence. All, until there is none
of them left, abandon the clay homes which would be their undoing once
the entrance was plugged up. The earthen niche, so grateful to the
tender skin, thanks to its polished coating, so free from humidity,
thanks to its waterproof glaze, ought, one would think, to make an
excellent waiting-place. The maggots will have none of it. Lest they
should find themselves walled in when they become frail Gnats, they go
away and disperse in the neighbourhood of the ascending shaft.

My digging operations, in fact, always reveal the pupae outside the
cells, never inside. I find them enshrined, one by one, in the body
of the clayey earth, in a narrow recess which the emigrant worm has
contrived to make for itself. Next spring, when the hour comes for
leaving, the adult insect has but to creep through the rubbish, which is
easy work.

Another and no less imperative reason compels this change of abode on
the parasite