ble by the mother's structure. The egg, that delicate
object, is laid roughly in the blazing sun, between grains of sand,
in some wrinkle of the calcined chalk. That summary installation is
sufficient, provided the coveted larva be near at hand. It is for the
young grub now to manage as best it can at its own risk and peril.

Though the sunken roads of the Legue did not tell me all that I wished
to know, they at least made it very probable that the coming grub must
reach the victualled cell by its own efforts. But the grub which we
know, the one that drains the bag of fat which may be a Chalicodoma
larva or an Osmia larva, cannot move from its place, still less indulge
in journeys of discovery through the thickness of a wall and the web
of a cocoon. So an imperative necessity presents itself: there must
perforce be an initial larva form, capable of moving and organized for
searching, a form under which the grub would attain its end. The
Anthrax would thus possess two larval states: one to penetrate to the
provisions; the other to consume them. I allow myself to be convinced
by the logic of it all; I already see in my mind's eye the wee animal
coming out of the egg, endowed with sufficient power of motion not to
dread a walk and with sufficient slenderness to glide into the smallest
crevices. Once in the presence of the larva on which it is to feed, it
doffs its travelling dress and becomes the obese animal whose one duty
it is to grow big and fat in immobility. This is all very coherent;
it is all deduced like a geometrical proposition. But to the wings of
imagination, however smooth their flight, we must prefer the sandals
of observed facts, the slow sandals with the leaden soles. Thus shod, I
proceed.

Next year, I resume my investigations, this time on the Anthrax of the
Chalicodoma, who is my neighbor in the surrounding wastelands and will
allow me to repeat my visits daily, morning and evening if need be.
Taught by my earlier studies, I now know the exact period of the Bee's
hatching and therefore of the Anthrax' laying, which must take place
soon after. Anthrax trifasciata settles her family in July, or in August
at latest. Every morning, at nine o'clock, when the heat begins to
be unendurable and when, to use [the author's gardener and factotum]
Favier's expression, an extra log is flung on the bonfire of the sun,
I take the field, prepared to come back with my head aching from the
glare, provided that I bring h