e, tapering at both ends, sharply segmented and
covered all over their bodies with a coat of fine, soft hairs which is
invisible except under the lens. The head consists of a little knob much
smaller in diameter than the body. In this head, the microscope reveals
mandibles consisting of fine spikes of a tawny red, which spread into a
wide, colorless base. Deprived of any indentation, incapable of chewing
anything between their awl-shaped ends, these two tools serve at best to
fix the grub slightly at some point of the fostering larva. Useless for
carving, therefore, the mouth is a pure osculatory sucker, which drains
the provisions by a process of exudation through the skin. We see here
repeated what the Anthrax and the Leucospis have already shown us:
the gradual exhaustion of a victim which the parasite consumes without
killing it.

It is a curious spectacle even after that of the Anthrax. We have here
twenty or thirty starvelings, all with their mouths pressed, as for a
kiss, to the body of the plump larva, which, from day to day, fades and
shrinks without the least appreciable wound, thus keeping fresh until
reduced to a shriveled slough. If I disturb the gluttonous swarm, all,
with a sudden recoil, let go, drop off and flounder around the foster
mother. They are no less prompt in resuming their savage kisses. I need
not add that neither at the point where they leave off nor at the point
where they recommence is there the faintest trace of liquid. The oily
exudation occurs only when the pump is at work. To linger over this
strange method of feeding is superfluous after what I have said about
the Anthrax.

The appearance of the full grown insect takes place at the beginning of
summer, after nearly a whole year's stay in the invaded dwelling. The
large number of inhabitants of one and the same cell led me to think
that the work of deliverance ought to present a certain interest. They
are all equally anxious to clear the walls of the prison at the earliest
possible moment and to come forth into the great festival of the sun: do
they all at the same time, in a confused horde, attack the ceiling which
has to be pierced? Is the work of deliverance arranged in the general
interest? Or is individual selfishness the only rule? These are the
questions which observation will answer.

A little in advance of the proper season, I transfer each family into
a short glass tube, which will represent the natal cell. A good, thick
c