Insect Adventures

by Jean-Henri Fabre; Louise Hasbrouck Zimm

THE DOORKEEPERS

The Zebra Bee’s spring family, when no accident such as we have been describing has happened, consists of about ten young Bees, all sisters. They save time by using the mother’s house, all of them together, without dispute. They come and go peacefully through the same door, attend to their business, pass and let the others pass. Down at the bottom of the pit, each Bee has her little home, a group of cells which she has dug for herself. Here she works alone; but the passage way is free to all the sisters.

Let us watch them as they go to and fro. A harvester comes back from the fields, the feather-brushes of her legs powdered with pollen. If the door be open, the Bee at once dives underground. She is very busy, and she does not waste time on the threshold. Sometimes several appear upon the scene at almost the same moment. The passage is too narrow for two, especially when they have to avoid jostling each other and so making the floury burden fall to the floor. The one nearest to the opening enters quickly. The others, drawn up on the threshold in the order of their arrival, respectful of one another’s rights, await their turn. As soon as the first disappears, the second follows after her, and is herself swiftly followed by the third and then the others, one by one.

Sometimes a Bee about to come out meets a Bee about to go in. Then the latter draws back a little and makes way for the other. Each Bee tries to outdo the other in politeness. I see some who, when on the point of coming out from the pit, go down again and leave the passage free for the one who has just arrived. Thanks to this accommodating spirit on the part of all, the business of the house goes on without delay.

Let us keep our eyes open. There is something even better than this to see. When a Bee appears, returning from her round of the flowers, we see a sort of trap door, which closes the house, suddenly fall and give a free passage. As soon as the new arrival has entered, the trap rises back into its place, almost level with the ground, and closes the entrance again. The same thing happens when the insects go out. At a request from within, the trap descends, the door opens and the Bee flies away. The opening is closed at once.

What can this thing be, which works like the piston of a pump, and opens and closes the door at each departure and each arrival? It is a Bee, who has become the doorkeeper of the establishment. With her large head she stops up the top of the entrance hall. If any one belonging to the house wants to go in or out, she “pulls the cord,” that is to say, she withdraws to a spot where the gallery becomes wider and leaves room for two. When the other has passed she returns to the opening and blocks it with the top of her head. Motionless, ever on the lookout, she does not leave her post except to drive away persistent visitors.

When she does come outside, let us take a look at her. We recognize in her a Bee similar to the others except that the top of her head is bald and her dress is dingy and threadbare. All the nap is gone; and one can hardly make out the handsome stripes of red and brown which she used to have. These tattered, work-worn garments make things clear to us.

This Bee who mounts guard and does the work of a doorkeeper is older than the others. She is in fact the foundress of the establishment, the mother of the actual workers, the grandmother of the present grubs. When she was young, three months ago, she wore herself out making her nest all by herself. Now she is taking a well-earned rest, but hardly a rest, for she is helping the household to the best of her power.

You remember the suspicious Kid, in La Fontaine’s fable, who, looking through the chink of the door, said to the Wolf:

“Show me a white foot, or I shan’t open the door.”

The grandmother Bee is no less suspicious. She says to each comer:

“Show me the yellow foot of a Wild Honey-bee, or you won’t be let in.”

None is admitted to the dwelling unless she be recognized as a member of the family.

See for yourselves. Near the burrow passes an Ant, an unscrupulous adventuress, who would not be sorry to know the meaning of the honeyed fragrance that rises from the bottom of the cellar.

“Be off, or you’ll catch it!” says the doorkeeping Bee, with a movement of her neck.

Usually the threat is enough. The Ant leaves at once. Should she insist, the grandmother leaves her sentry-box, flings herself upon the saucy Ant, beats her, and drives her away. The moment she has given her punishment, she returns to her post.

“‘Be off, or you’ll catch it!’ says the doorkeeping bee.”

Next comes the turn of the Leaf-cutting Bee, who, unskilled in the art of burrowing, uses the old galleries dug by others. Those of the Zebra Bee suit her very well, when the terrible Gnat has left them vacant for lack of heirs. Seeking for a home wherein to stack her Robinia-leaf honey-pots, she often makes a flying visit to my colonies of Wild Bees. A burrow seems to take her fancy; but, before she sets foot on earth, her buzzing is noticed by the sentry, who suddenly darts out and makes a few gestures on the threshold of her door. That is all. The Leaf-cutter has understood. She moves on.

Sometimes the Leaf-cutting Bee has time to alight and stick her head into the mouth of the pit. In a moment the grandmother is there, comes a little higher, and bars the way. Follows a not very serious contest. The stranger quickly recognizes the rights of the first occupant and, without insisting, goes to seek a home elsewhere.

A clever burglar, the parasite of the Leaf-cutting Bee, receives a sound whipping under my eyes. She thought, the featherbrain, that she was entering the Leaf-cutter’s house! She soon finds out her mistake; she meets the grandmother Bee, who punishes her severely. She makes off at full speed. And so with the others who, through carelessness or ambition, try to enter the burrow.

Sometimes the doorkeeping Bee has an encounter with another grandmother. About the middle of July, when the Bee colony is at its busiest, there appear to be two distinct sets of Bees: the young mothers and the old. The young ones, much more numerous, brisk in movement and smartly arrayed, come and go unceasingly from the burrows to the fields and from the fields to the burrows. The older ones, faded and dispirited, wander idly from hole to hole. They look as though they had lost their way and could not find their homes. Who are these vagabonds? I see in them afflicted ones who have lost a family through the act of the hateful Gnat. At the awakening of summer, the poor mother Bee found herself alone. She left her empty house and went off in search of a dwelling where there were cradles to defend, a guard to keep. But those fortunate nests already have their overseer, the grandmother, who is jealous and gives her unemployed neighbor a cold reception. One sentry is enough; two would merely block the narrow passage.

Sometimes the grandmothers actually fight. When the tramp looking for employment appears outside the door, the one on guard does not move from her post, does not withdraw into the passage, as she would before a young Bee returning from the fields. Instead of that, she threatens the intruder with her feet and jaws. The other retaliates and tries to force her way in notwithstanding. They come to blows. The fight ends by the defeat of the stranger, who goes off to pick a quarrel elsewhere.

What becomes of the poor grandmothers who have no homes? They grow rarer and more languid from day to day; then they disappear for good. The little Gray Lizard had his eye on them, they are easily snapped up.

As for the one on guard, she seems never to rest. In the cool hours of the early morning, she is at her post. She is there also towards noon, when the harvesting is in full swing and there are many Bees going in and out. In the afternoon, when the heat is great and the working Bees do not go to the fields, but stay indoors instead, preparing the new cells, the grandmother is still upstairs, stopping the door with her bald head. She takes no nap during the stifling hours: the safety of the household requires her to forego it. At nightfall, or even later, she is just as busy as in the day. The others are resting, but not she, for fear, apparently, of night dangers known to herself alone.

Guarded in this manner, the burrow is safe from such a misfortune as overtook it in May. Let the Gnat come now, if she dare, to steal the Bee’s loaves! She will be put to flight at once. She will not come, because, until spring returns, she is underground in the pupa state, that is, wrapped up in her cocoon. But in her absence there is no lack, among the Fly rabble, of other parasites. And yet, for all my daily visits, I never catch one of these in the neighborhood of the summer burrows. How well the rascals know their trade! How well aware are they of the guard who keeps watch at the Bees’ door!

CHAPTER VI
THE LEAF-CUTTING BEE

If you know how to use your eyes in your garden you may observe, some day or other, a number of curious holes in the leaves of the lilac- and rose-trees, some of them round, some of them oval, as if idle but skillful hands had been at work with the pinking-iron. In some places there is scarcely anything but the veins of the leaves left. The author of the mischief is a gray-clad Bee. For scissors, she has her jaws; for compasses, she has her eye and the pivot of her body. The pieces cut out are made into thimble-shaped bags, meant to contain the honey and the egg: the larger, oval pieces make the floor and sides; the smaller, round pieces are kept for the lid. The Leaf-cutter’s nest consists of a row of a dozen, more or less, of these thimbles, placed one on top of the other.

One species of the Leaf-cutting Bee whom we will notice is called the White-girdled Leaf-cutter. She usually takes for her dwelling the tunnel of some Earthworm opening off a claybank. The tunnel is too deep for her purpose. At the bottom of it the climate is too damp, and besides, when the Bee-grub is hatched, it would be dangerous for it to have to climb so far through all sorts of rubbish to reach the surface. The Leaf-cutter, therefore, uses only the front part of the Worm’s gallery, seven or eight inches at the most. What is to be done with the rest of the tunnel? It would never do to leave it open, because some underground burglar, a worm or other insect, might come that way and attack the cells at the rear.

The little Bee foresees this danger. She sets to work to block the passage with a strong barricade of fragments of leaves, some dozens of pieces rolled into screws and fitting into each other. You can see that the insect has cut out these pieces carelessly and hurriedly, and on a different pattern from that of the pieces which are to make the nest.

Next after the barricade of leaves comes the row of cells, usually about five or six in number. These are made of round and oval pieces, as we have seen; oval for the sides, round for the lid. There are two sizes of ovals, the larger ones for the outside and bottom of the bag; the smaller ones for the inside, to make the walls thicker and fill up the gaps.

The Leaf-cutter therefore is able to use her scissors according to the task before her; she makes large or small pieces as they are needed. She is especially careful about the bottom of the bag. As the natural curve of the larger pieces is not enough to make a cup without cracks in it, the Bee improves the work with two or three small ovals applied to the holes.

The cover of the pot consists solely of round pieces, and these are cut so exactly by the careful Bee that the edges of the cover rest upon the brim of the honey-bag. No one could do better with the help of compasses.

When the row of cells is finished, the entrance to the gallery must be blocked up with a safety stopper. The Bee then returns to the free and easy use of her scissor-jaws which we noticed at the beginning when she was fencing off the back part of the Earthworm’s too-deep burrow; she cuts out of the foliage irregular pieces of different shapes and sizes; and with all these pieces, very few of which fit at all closely the opening to be blocked, she succeeds in making a door which cannot be forced open, thanks to the huge number of layers.

Let us leave the Leaf-cutter to finish laying her eggs, and consider for a moment her skill as a cutter. What model does she use, when cutting her neat ovals out of the delicate Robinia-leaves, which she uses for her cells? What pattern that she carries in her mind guides her scissors? What system of measurement tells her the correct size? One would like to picture the insect as a living pair of compasses, able to trace curves by swaying her body, even as our arm traces a circle by swinging from the shoulder. This explanation might do if she made only one size of oval; but she makes two, large and small. A pair of compasses which changes its radius of its own accord and alters the curve according to the plan before it appears to me an instrument somewhat difficult to believe in. Besides, the Bee cuts out round pieces also. These rounds, for the most part, fit the mouth of her jar almost exactly. When the cell is finished, the Bee flies hundreds of yards away to make the lid. She arrives at the leaf from which the round pieces are to be cut. What picture, what recollection has she of the pot to be covered? Why, none at all; she has never seen it; she does her work underground, in utter darkness! At the utmost, she can only remember how it felt.

And yet the circular piece to be cut out must be of a certain size: if it were too large, it would not go in; if too small, it would close badly, it would slip down on the honey and suffocate the egg. The Bee does not hesitate a moment. She cuts out her circle as quickly as she would cut out any shapeless piece; and that circle, without further measurement, is of the right size to fit the pot. Who can explain this geometry?

One winter evening, as we were sitting round the fire, whose cheerful blaze unloosed our tongues, I put the problem of the Leaf-cutter to my family:

“Among your kitchen utensils,” I said, “you have a pot in daily use; but it has lost its lid, which was knocked over and broken by the cat playing on the shelves. To-morrow is market-day and one of you will be going to Orange to buy the week’s provisions. Would she undertake, without a measure of any kind, with the sole aid of memory, which we would allow her to refresh by a careful examination of the object before starting, to bring back exactly what the pot wants, a lid neither too large nor too small, in short, the same size as the top?”

It was admitted with one accord that nobody would accept such a commission without taking a measure with her, or at least a bit of string giving the width. Our memory for sizes is not accurate enough. She would come back from the town with something that “might do”; and it would be the merest chance if this turned out to be the right size.

“What pattern that she carries in her mind guides her scissors?”

Well, the Leaf-cutting Bee is even less well off than ourselves. She has no mental picture of her pot, because she has never seen it; she is not able to pick and choose in the crockery dealer’s heap, which acts as something of a guide to our memory by comparison; she must, without hesitation, far away from her home, cut out a disk that fits the top of her jar. What is impossible to us is child’s play to her. Where we could not do without a measure of some kind, a bit of string, a pattern or a scrap of paper with figures upon it, the little Bee needs nothing at all. In housekeeping matters she is cleverer than we are.

The insect excels us in practical geometry. I look upon the Leaf-cutter’s pot and lid as an addition to the many other marvels of instinct that cannot be explained by mechanics; I submit it to the consideration of science; and I pass on.

CHAPTER VII
THE COTTON-BEES AND RESIN-BEES

There are many Bees who, like the Leaf-cutters, do not make their own dwellings, but use shelters made by the work of others. Many of the Osmia-bees seize the old homes of the Masons; other honey-gatherers use earthworm galleries, snail-shells, dry brambles which have been made into hollow tubes by the mining Bees, and even the homes of the Digger Wasps burrowed in the sand. Among these borrowers are the Cotton-bees, who fill the reeds with cottony satchels, and the Resin-bees, who plug up snail-shells with gum and resin.

There is a reason for such arrangement. The Bees who work hard to make their homes, such as the Mason-bee, who scrapes hard clay and makes a large cement mansion, the Carpenter-bee, who bores dead wood to a depth of nine inches, and the Anthophora, who digs corridors and cells in the banks hardened by the sun, have no time left to spend in furnishing their cells elaborately. On the other hand, the Bees who take possession of ready-made homes, are artists in interior decorations. There is the Leaf-cutting Bee, who makes her leafy baskets with such skill; the Upholsterer-bee, who hangs her cells with poppy-petals, and the Cotton-bee, who makes the most beautiful purses of cotton.

We have only to look at the Cotton-bee’s nests, to realize that the insect who makes these could not be a digger, too. When newly-felted, and not yet sticky with honey, the wadded purse is very elegant, of a dazzling white. No bird’s-nest can compare with it in fineness of material or in gracefulness of form. How, with the little bales of cotton brought up one by one in her mouth, can the Bee manage to mat all together into one material and then to work this into a thimble-shaped wallet? She has no other tools to work with than those owned by the Mason-bees and the Leaf-cutting Bees; namely, her jaws and her feet. Yet what very different results are obtained!

It is hard to see the Cotton-bees in action, since they work inside the reeds when making the nests. However, I will describe the little that I saw. The Bee procures her cotton from many different kinds of plants, such as thistles, mulleins, the woolly sage and everlastings. She uses only the plants that are dead and dry, however, never fresh ones.

In this way she avoids mildew, which would make its appearance in her nests in the mass of hairs still filled with sap.

She alights on the plant she wishes to use, scrapes it with her mouth, and then passes the tiny flake to her hind-legs, which hold it pressed against the chest, mixes with it still more down, and makes the whole into a little ball. When this is the size of a pea, it goes back to the mouth, and the insect flies off, with her bale of cotton in her mouth. If we have the patience to wait, we shall see her coming back again and again to the same plant, until her bags are all made.

The Cotton-bee uses different grades of cotton for the different parts of her work. She is like the bird, who furnishes the inside of her nest with wool to make it soft for the little birds, and strengthens the outside with sticks. The Bee makes her cells, the grubs’ nurseries, of the very finest down, the cotton gathered from a thistle; she makes the barrier plug at the entrance of stiff, prickly hairs, such as the coarse bristles scraped from a mullein-leaf.

I do not see her making the cells inside the bramble, but I catch her preparing the plug for the top. With her fore-legs she tears the cotton apart and spreads it out; with her jaws she loosens the hard lumps; with her forehead she presses each new layer of the plug upon the one below. This is a rough task; but probably her general way of working is the same for the finer cells.

Some Cotton-bees after making the plug go even further and fill up the empty space at the end of the bramble with any kind of rubbish that they can find: little pieces of gravel, bits of earth, grains of sawdust, mortar, cypress-catkins, or broken leaves. The pile is a real barricade, and will keep any foe from breaking in.

The honey with which the Cotton-bee whose nest I examined filled the cells was pale-yellow, all of the same kind and only partly liquefied, so that it would not trickle through the cotton bag. On this honey the egg is laid. After a while the grub is hatched and finds its food all ready. It plunges its head in the honey, drinks long draughts, and grows fat. We will leave it there, knowing that after a while it will build a cocoon and turn into a Cotton-bee.

Another interesting Bee who uses a ready-made home is the Resin-bee. In the stone-heaps which have been left from the quarries, we often find the Field-mouse sitting on a grass mattress, nibbling acorns, almonds, olive-stones, apricot-stones, and snail-shells. When he is gone, he has left behind him, under the overhanging stones, a heap of empty shells. Among these, there is always a hope of finding a few plugged up with resin, the nests of this sort of Bee. The Osmia-bees also use snail-shells, but they plug them up with clay.

It is hard to tell the Resin-bees’ nests, because the insect often makes its home at the very inside of the spiral, a long way from the mouth. I hold up a shell to the light. If it is quite transparent, I know that it is empty and I put it back to be used for future nests. If the second whorl is opaque, does not let the light through, the spiral contains something. What? Earth washed in by the rain? Remnants of the dead Snail? That remains to be seen. With a little pocket-trowel I make a wide window in the middle of the final whorl. If I see a gleaming resin floor, with incrustations of gravel, the thing is settled: I have a Resin-bee’s nest.

The Bee picks out the particular whorl of the shell which is the right size for her nest. In large shells, the nest is near the back; in smaller shells, at the very front, where the passage is widest. She always makes a partition of a mosaic formed of bits of gravel set in gum. I did not know at first what this gum was. It is amber-colored, semi-transparent, brittle, soluble in spirits of wine, and burns with a sooty flame and a strong smell of resin. These characteristics told me that the Bee uses the resinous drops that ooze from the trunks of various cone-bearing trees. There are plenty of junipers in the neighborhood, and I think that these form the main part of this Bee’s materials. If there were pines, cypresses, and other cone-bearing trees near, she would probably use those.

After the lid of resin and gravel, the Bee stops up the shell still further with bits of gravel, catkins and needles of the juniper, and other odds and ends, including a few rare little land-shells. This is the secondary barrier, to make the shell still safer for her nest. The Cotton-bee uses the same sort of barrier in the bramble. The Resin-bee uses it only in the larger shells, where there is much vacant space; in the smaller ones, where her nest reaches nearly to the entrance, she does without it.

The cells come next, farther back in the spiral. There are usually only two. The front room, which is the larger, contains a male, which in this kind of Bee is larger than the female; the smaller back room houses a female. It is extraordinary how the mother Bee knows the sex of the egg she is laying. This matter has never been explained to the satisfaction of scientists.

The Resin-bee makes a mistake in choosing large shells and not filling them up to the very entrance. The Osmia-bee also makes her nest in snail-shells; she often seizes upon the empty rooms in the Resin-bee’s house and fills them with her mass of cells. She then stops up the entrance with a thick clay stopper. When July comes, this house with the two families of tenants becomes the scene of a tragic conflict. The Resin-bees, in the back rooms, on attaining the adult state, burst their swaddling bands, bore their way through the resin partitions, pass through the gravel barricade and try to release themselves. Alas, the strange family ahead blocks the way! The Osmia inmates are still in the grub stage; they mean to stay in their cells till the next spring. The Resin-bees cannot get out through this second row of clay-stoppered cells; they give up all hope and perish behind the wall of earth. If their mother had only foreseen this danger, the disaster would never have happened; but instinct has failed her for once. Misfortune has not taught the Resin-bees anything through all the generations; and this contradicts the theory of those scientists who say that animals learn through experience.

CHAPTER VIII
THE HAIRY SAND-WASPS

A slender waist, a slim shape; an abdomen tapering very much at the upper part and fastened to the body as though by a thread; black raiment with a red sash across the belly: there you have a short description of the burrowing Sand-Wasps, who hunt Caterpillars.

The Sand-Wasps choose for their burrows a light soil, easily tunneled, in which the sand is held together with a little clay and lime. Edges of paths, sunny banks where the grass is rather bare—these are the favorite spots. In spring, quite early in April, we see the Hairy Sand-Wasp there.

Its burrow is a straight up-and-down hole, like a well, about as thick as a goose-quill and about two inches deep. At the bottom is a solitary cell, to hold the egg. The Sand-Wasp digs by herself, quietly, without hurrying, without any joyous enthusiasm. As usual, the front feet serve as rakes and the jaws do duty as mining-tools. When some grain of sand is very hard to remove, you hear rising from the well a sort of shrill grating sound made by the quivering of the insect’s wings and of her whole body. Every little while the Wasp appears in the open with a load of dirt in her teeth, some bit of gravel which she usually flies away with and drops at a distance of a few inches, so as not to litter the place.

Some of these grains the Sand-Wasp does not treat as she does the rest. Instead of flying off and dropping them far from the work yard, she removes them on foot and lays them near her burrow. She has a special use for them. When her home is dug, she looks at this little heap of stones to see if there is any there to suit her. If there is not, she explores the neighborhood until she finds what she wants, a small flat stone a little larger in diameter than the mouth of her hole. She carries off this slab in her jaws and lays it, as a temporary door, over the opening of the burrow. To-morrow, when she comes back from hunting, the Wasp will know how to find her home, made safe by this heavy door; she will bring back a paralyzed caterpillar, grasped by the skin of its neck and dragged between her legs; she will lift the slab, which looks exactly like the other little stones around, and which she alone is able to identify; she will let down the game to the bottom of her well, lay her egg and close the house for good by sweeping into the hole all the rubbish, which she has kept near by.

The Hairy Sand-Wasp hunts a particular sort of prey, a kind of large Caterpillar called the Gray Worm, which spends most of its time underground. How does she then get hold of it? We shall see. One day I was returning from a walk when I saw a Hairy Sand-Wasp very busy at the foot of a tuft of thyme. I at once lay down on the ground, close to where she was working. My presence did not frighten the Wasp; in fact, she came and settled on my sleeve for a moment, decided that her visitor was harmless, since he did not move, and returned to her tuft of thyme. As an old stager, I knew what this tameness meant: the Wasp was too busy to bother about me.

The insect scratched the ground at the foot of the plant, where the root joined the stem, pulled up slender grass rootlets and poked her head under the little clods which she had lifted. She ran hurriedly this way and that around the thyme, looking at every crevice. She was not digging herself a burrow but hunting the game hidden underground; she was like a Dog trying to dig a Rabbit out of his hole.

Presently, excited by what was happening overhead, a big Gray Worm made up his mind to leave his lair and come up to the light of day. That settled him: the Wasp was on the spot at once, gripping him by the skin of his neck and holding tight in spite of his contortions. Perched on the monster’s back, the Wasp bent her abdomen and deliberately, without hurrying, like a clever surgeon, drove her lancet-sting into the back surface of each of the victim’s rings or segments, from the first to the last. Not a ring was left without receiving a stab; all, whether with legs or without, were dealt with in order, from front to back.

The Wasp’s skill would make science turn green with envy! She knows by instinct what man hardly ever knows; she knows her victim’s nervous system and exactly what nerve centers to strike to make it motionless without killing it. Where does she receive this knowledge? From the power that rules the world, and guides the ignorant by the laws of its inspiration.

I will tell you about another encounter of a Sand-Wasp with a Gray Worm which I witnessed. It was in May, when I detected a Sand-Wasp giving a last sweep of the rake to her burrow, on the smooth, hard path. She had paralyzed her Caterpillar, probably, and left it a few yards away from the home while she made ready the entrance. At last the cave is pronounced spick and span, and the doorway thought wide enough to admit the bulky prey. The Sand-Wasp sets off in search of her captive.

She finds it easily. It is a Gray Worm, lying on the ground: but, alas, the Ants have found it, too; they have already invaded it. The Wasp now scorns it. She will not have anything to do with a Worm which she must share with Ants. To drive them away is impossible; for each one sent to the right-about, ten would return to the attack. So the Wasp seems to think; for she goes on with her hunting, without indulging in useless strife.

She explores the soil within a radius of ten feet from the nest, on foot, little by little, without hurrying; she lashes the ground continually with her antennæ curved like a bow. For nearly three hours, in the heat of the sun, I watch her search. What a difficult thing a Gray Worm is to find, for a Wasp who needs it just at that moment!

It is no less difficult for man. I have a plan. I wish to give the Wasp a Worm in order to see how she paralyzes it.

Favier, my old soldier friend, is there, gardening. I call out to him:

“Come here, quick; I want some Gray Worms!”

I explain the thing to him. He understands at once and goes in search. He digs at the foot of the lettuces, he scrapes among the strawberry-beds, he inspects the iris-borders. I know his sharp eyes and his intelligence; I have every confidence in him. Meanwhile, time passes.

“Well, Favier? Where’s that Gray Worm?”

“I can’t find one, sir.”

“Bother! Then come to the rescue, you others! Claire, Aglaé, all of you! Hurry up, hunt and find!”

The whole family is put at work. All its members become very active. But nothing turns up: three hours pass and not one of us has found the Caterpillar.

The Sand-Wasp does not find it either. I see her hunting persistently in spots where the earth is slightly cracked. She wears herself out in clearing-operations; with a great effort she removes lumps of earth the size of an apricot-stone. These spots are soon given up, however. Then a suspicion comes to me: perhaps the Gray Worm, foreseeing a gathering storm, has dug its way lower down. The huntress Wasp very well knows where it lies, but cannot get it out from its deep hiding-place. Wherever the Sand-Wasp scratches, there must a Gray Worm be; she leaves the place only because she cannot dig deep enough. It was very stupid of me not to have thought of this earlier. Would such an experienced huntress pay any attention to a place where there is really nothing? What nonsense!

I make up my mind to help her. The insect, at this moment, is digging a tilled and absolutely bare spot. It leaves the place, as it has already done with so many others. I myself continue the work, with the blade of a knife. I do not find anything, either; and I leave it. The insect comes back and again begins to scratch at a certain part of my excavations. I understand:

“Get out of that, you clumsy fellow!” the Wasp seems to say. “I’ll show you where the thing lives!”

I dig at the spot she indicates and unearth a Gray Worm. Well done, my clever Sand-Wasp! Did I not say that you would never have raked at an empty burrow?

Following the same system, I obtain a second Gray Worm, followed by a third and a fourth. The digging is always done at bare spots that have been turned by the pitchfork a few months earlier. There is absolutely nothing to show the presence of the Caterpillar from without. Well, Favier, Claire, Aglaé, and the rest of you, what have you to say? In three hours you have not been able to dig me up a single Gray Worm, whereas this clever huntress supplies me with as many as I want, once that I have thought of coming to her assistance!