rear and rows of harpoons on the
back wherewith to rip open the Osmia bee's cocoon and break through
the hard crust of the hillside, betokened a field that was worth
cultivating. The little that I said about her at the time brought me
urgent entreaties: I was asked for a circumstantial chapter on the
strange fly. The stern necessities of life postponed to an ever
retreating future my beloved investigations, so miserably stifled.
Thirty years have passed; at last, a little leisure is at hand; and
here, in the harmas of my village, with an ardor that has in no wise
grown old, I have resumed my plans of yore, still alive like the coal
smoldering under the ashes. The Anthrax has told me her secrets, which I
in my turn am going to divulge. Would that I could address all those who
cheered me on this path, including first and foremost the revered Master
of the Landes [Leon Dufour]. But the ranks have thinned, many have been
promoted to another world and their disciple lagging behind them can but
record, in memory of those who are no more, the story of the insect clad
in deepest mourning.

In the course of July, let us give a few sideward knocks to the bracing
pebbles and detach the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Walls [a mason
bee] from their supports. Loosened by the shock, the dome comes off
cleanly, all in one piece. Moreover--and this is a great advantage--the
cells come into view wide open on the base of the exposed nest, for at
this point they have no other wall than the surface of the pebble. In
this way, without any scraping, which would be wearisome work for the
operator and dangerous to the inhabitants of the dome, we have all the
cells before our eyes, together with their contents, consisting of a
silky, amber-yellow cocoon, as delicate and translucent as an onion
peeling. Let us split the dainty wrapper with the scissors, chamber by
chamber, nest by nest. If fortune be at all propitious, as it always is
to the persevering, we shall end by finding that the cocoons harbor two
larvae together, one more or less faded in appearance, the other fresh
and plump. We shall also find some, no less plentiful, in which the
withered larva is accompanied by a family of little grubs wriggling
uneasily around it.

Examination at once reveals the tragedy that is happening under the
cover of the cocoon. The flacid and faded larva is the mason bee's.
A month ago, in June, having finished its mess of honey, it wove its
silken sheath