is exempt? Why...oh, where have I got to? I was
going in, wasn't I, with a splitting headache? Quick, let us get back to
our subject!

It was in the first week of July that I saw the inoculation begin on
my Chalicodoma sicula nests. The parasite is at her task in the hottest
part of the day, close on three o'clock in the afternoon; and work goes
on almost to the end of the month, decreasing gradually in activity.
I count as many as twelve Leucopses at a time on the most
thickly-populated pair of tiles. The insect slowly and awkwardly
explores the nests. It feels the surface with its antennae, which are
bent at a right angle after the first joint. Then, motionless, with
lowered head, it seems to meditate and to debate within itself on the
fitness of the spot. Is it here or somewhere else that the coveted larva
lies? There is nothing outside, absolutely nothing, to tell us. It is a
stony expanse, bumpy but yet very uniform in appearance, for the cells
have disappeared under a layer of plaster, a work of public interest to
which the whole swarm devotes its last days. If I myself, with my long
experience, had to decide upon the suitable point, even if I were at
liberty to make use of a lens for examining the mortar grain by grain
and to auscultate the surface in order to gather information from the
sound emitted, I should decline the job, persuaded in advance that I
should fail nine times out of ten and only succeed by chance.

Where my discernment, aided by reason and my optical contrivances,
fails, the insect, guided by the wands of its antennae, never blunders.
Its choice is made. See it unsheathing its long instrument. The probe
points normally towards the surface and occupies nearly the central spot
between the two middle-legs. A wide dislocation appears on the back,
between the first and second segments of the abdomen; and the base of
the instrument swells like a bladder through this opening; while the
point strives to penetrate the hard clay. The amount of energy expended
is shown by the way in which the bladder quivers. At every moment we
expect to see the frail membrane burst with the violence of the effort.
But it does not give way; and the wire goes deeper and deeper.

Raising itself high on its legs, to give free play to its apparatus, the
insect remains motionless, the only sign of its arduous labours being a
slight vibration. I see some perforators who have finished operating in
a quarter of an hour. These