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. [Illustration: 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, 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. Straight from the blue she dropped on May's last morning, swerved through the hum and racket of the Bees, poised with her smoke-grey wings a-whir, and lighted softly on the centre ledge, her ebony body mirroring the sun, her five gold girdles blazing. [Illustration: FIRST THE WILD BEES, RED KINGS, BLACK QUEENS] Down dropped a Red King at her side. He stared at her right royally, and kept right royal silence, yet there was kindness in his yellow face, and kindness in the purr of his departure. Down dropped a Black Queen in his place, and danced and hummed about her, and measured her slim-waistedness, and buzzed her disapproval.--"What is it?" asked she snappishly. "Why does it come in this get-up? Where has it left its furs?" [Illustration: DOWN DROPPED A RED KING AT HER SIDE. HE STARED AT HER RIGHT ROYALLY]