p's grub has eaten
it.

Another of these splendid malefactors is decked in lapis-lazuli on the
thorax and in Florentine bronze and gold on the abdomen, with a terminal
scarf of azure. The nomenclators have christened her Stilbum calens,
FAB. When Eumenes Amedei (A species of Mason-wasp.--Translator's Note.)
has built on the rock her agglomeration of dome-shaped cells, with
a casing of little pebbles set in the plaster, when the store of
Caterpillars is consumed and the secluded ones have hung their
apartments with silk, we see the Stilbum take her stand on the
inviolable citadel. No doubt some imperceptible cranny, some defect in
the cement, allows her to insert her ovipositor, which shoots out like
a probe. At any rate, about the end of the following May, the Eumenes'
chamber contains a cocoon which again is shaped like a thimble. From
this cocoon comes a Stilbum calens. There is nothing left of the
Eumenes' grub: the Golden Wasp has gorged herself upon it.

Flies play no small part in this brigandage. Nor are they the least
to be dreaded, weaklings though they be, sometimes so feeble that the
collector dare not take them in his fingers for fear of crushing them.
There are some clad in velvet so extraordinarily delicate that the least
touch rubs it off. They are fluffs of down almost as frail, in their
soft elegance, as the crystalline edifice of a snowflake before it
touches ground. They are called Bombylii.

With this fragility of structure is combined an incomparable power of
flight. See this one, hovering motionless two feet above the ground. Her
wings vibrate so rapidly that they appear to be in repose. The insect
looks as though it were hung at one point in space by some invisible
thread. You make a movement; and the Bombylius has disappeared. You cast
your eyes in search of her around you, far away, judging the distance
by the vigour of her flight. There is nothing here, nothing there. Then
where is she? Close by you. Look at the point whence she started:
the Bombylius is there again, hovering motionless. From this aerial
observatory, as quickly recovered as quitted, she inspects the ground,
watching for the favourable moment to establish her egg at the cost of
another creature's destruction. What does she covet for her
offspring: the honey-cupboard, the stores of game, the larvae in their
transformation-sleep? I do not know yet, What I do know is that her
slender legs and her dainty velvet dress do not allow