to abandon my attempts so soon. Now, very long afterwards, the idea
occurs to me to place under glass the Bee-eating Philanthus, whom I
sometimes surprise in the open engaged in forcing a bee to disgorge her
honey. The captive massacres her bees in such a spirited fashion that
the old hope revives stronger than ever. I contemplate reviewing all the
wielders of the stiletto and forcing each to reveal her tactics.

I was obliged to abate these ambitions considerably. I had some
successes and many more failures. I will tell you of the former. My
insect-cage is a spacious dome of wire-gauze resting on a bed of sand.
Here I keep in reserve the captives of my hunting-expeditions. I feed
them on honey, placed in little drops on spikes of lavender, on heads
of thistle, or field eryngo, or globe-thistle, according to the season.
Most of my prisoners do well on this diet and seem scarcely affected by
their internment; others pine away and die in two or three days.
These victims of despair nearly always throw me back, because of the
difficulty of obtaining the necessary prey at short notice.

Indeed it entails no small trouble to secure in the nick of time the
game demanded by the huntress who has recently fallen a captive to my
net. As assistant-purveyors I have a few small schoolboys, who, released
from the tedium of their declensions and conjugations, set out, on
leaving the classroom, to inspect the greenswards and beat the bushes
in the neighbourhood on my behalf. The gros sou, the penny-piece, if you
please, stimulates their zeal; but with misadventurous results! What I
need to-day is Crickets. The band sallies forth and returns with not a
single Cricket, but numbers of Ephippigers, for which I asked the day
before yesterday and which I no longer need, my Languedocian Sphex
being dead. General surprise at this sudden change of market. My young
scatterbrains find it hard to understand that the beast which was so
precious two days ago is now of no value whatever. When, owing to the
chances of my net, a renewed demand for the Ephippiger sets in, then
they will bring me the Cricket, the despised Cricket.

Such a trade could never hold out if now and again my speculators were
not encouraged by some success. At the moment when urgent necessity is
sending up prices, one of them brings me a magnificent Gad-fly intended
for the Bembex. For two hours, when the sun was at its height, he kept
watch on the threshing-floor hard by, wai