, known or
unknown, causes. The thing to do would be to offer the grub honey from
the first, before artificial rearing has affected its appetite. It is
useless, of course, to make the attempt with pure honey: no carnivorous
creature would touch it, though it were starving. The jam-sandwich is
the only device favourable to my plans, a meagre jam-sandwich, that is
to say, the dead Bee lightly smeared or varnished with honey by means of
a camel's-hair pencil.

Under these conditions, the problem is solved with the first few
mouthfuls. The grub that has bitten into the honeyed prey draws back in
disgust, hesitates a long time and then, urged by hunger, begins again,
tries this side and that and ends by refusing to touch the dish. For a
few days it pines away on top of its almost intact provisions; then it
dies. All that are subjected to this regimen succumb. Do they merely
perish of inanition in the presence of an unaccustomed food, which
revolts their appetite, or are they poisoned by the small quantity of
honey absorbed with the early mouthfuls? I cannot tell. The fact remains
that, whether poisonous or repugnant, the Bee in the state of bread and
jam is death to them; and this result explains, more clearly than the
unfavourable circumstance of my former experiment, my failures with the
Bee that had not been made to disgorge.

This refusal to touch the unwholesome or distasteful honey is connected
with principles of nutrition which are too general to constitute a
gastronomic peculiarity of the Philanthus. The other carnivorous larvae,
at least in the order of the Hymenoptera, are bound to share it. Let us
try. We will go to work as before. I unearth the larvae when they have
attained a medium size, to avoid the weakness of infancy; I take away
the natural provisions, smear the carcases separately with honey and,
when this is done, restore its victuals to each of the grubs. I had to
make a choice: not every subject was equally suited to my experiments. I
must reject the larvae which are fed on one fat joint, such as those
of the Scolia. The grub in fact attacks its prey at a determined point,
dips its head and neck into the insect's body, rooting skilfully in the
entrails to keep the game fresh until the end of the meal, and does
not withdraw from the breach until the whole skin is emptied of its
contents.

To make it let go with the object of coating the inside of the venison
with honey had two drawbacks: I should be c