This insect-tale is based on observations of fact extending over several summers. It may interest some of my readers to know the scientific names of the chief characters mentioned. I do not think that any of them have popular names. The heroine is the solitary Sand-Wasp Odynerus Spinipes, a blacker and somewhat smaller insect than the familiar yellow Wasps of Town and Garden. The Red King and the Black Queen are the male and female of a solitary Bumble Bee, Anthophora Pilipes. The Mistress of the Robes is a "Cuckoo" Bee, Melecta armata, which attends on Anthophora, and lays its eggs in the cells made by Anthophora for her own eggs. The grubs of both feed on the honey and pollen which Anthophora alone has the trouble of procuring. O. Spinipes has several cuckoos, the most officious being the jewel flies, Chrysis ignita and Chrysis bidentata, whose grubs, I fancy, eat the grub of Spinipes, as well as the food stored up for it. The Ophion is a common Ichneumon fly, and the beetle-grubs belong to a very common and destructive weevil, Hypera variabilis.
The Sand Cliff splits the old gravel-pit in two, and, jutting southward, fronts the mid-day sun. The cuttings driven east and west of it have long been clothed with furze and briar and nettle. Rank grass conceals the cart-track round its base, and, on its summit, a thin, root-bound soil gives foothold to a straggling hedge of privet.
THE SAND CLIFF SPLITS THE OLD GRAVEL-PIT IN TWO
Man, needing gravel only, scorned the sand; and, as he turned his back on it, came Nature, gently mothering; and brought it warmth, and light, and life.
First the Wild Bees, Red Kings, Black Queens
First the wild Bees, Red Kings, Black Queens, fringe-footed, shaggy-coated. These made a chambered palace of the cliff, and peopled it within a summer. With them came Lords-in-Waiting and their Ladies, in liveries of black velvet, ermine-faced; and, after these, a fluttering gauze-winged host—jewel-flies ablaze with green and blue and crimson, trim slender-waisted digger-wasps, long-streamered swart ichneumons. And, last of all, came Spinipes herself.