In this way I examined the cells. Some were still open, and contained only a more or less complete store of honey. Others were closely sealed with an earthen lid. The contents of these varied greatly. Sometimes I found the larva of a Bee; sometimes another, fatter kind of larva; at other times honey with an egg floating on the surface. The egg was of a beautiful white, and was shaped like a cylinder with a slight curve, a fifth or sixth of an inch in length—the egg of the Anthophora. In a few cells I found this egg floating all alone on the surface of the honey: in others, very many others, I saw, lying on the Bee’s egg as though on a sort of raft, a young Sitaris-grub. Its shape and size were those of the creature when it is hatched. Here, then, was the enemy within the gates. When and how did it get in? In none of the cells was I able to detect any chink by which it could have entered: they were all sealed quite tightly. The parasite must have established itself in the honey-warehouse before the warehouse was closed. On the other hand, the open cells, full of honey but as yet without an egg, never contain a Sitaris. The grub must therefore gain admittance either while the Bee is laying the egg, or else afterwards, while she is busy plastering up the door. My experiments have convinced me that the Sitaris enters the cell in the very second when the egg is laid on the surface of the honey. If I take a cell full of honey, with an egg floating in it, and place it in a glass tube with some Sitaris-grubs, they very rarely venture inside it. They cannot reach the raft in safety: the honey that surrounds it is too dangerous. If one of them by chance approaches the honey it tries to escape as soon as it sees the sticky nature of the stuff under its feet. It often ends by falling back into the cell, where it dies of suffocation. It is therefore certain that the grub does not leave the fleece of the Bee when the latter is in her cell or near it, in order to make a rush for the honey; for this honey would inevitably cause its death, if it so much as touched the surface. We must remember that the young Sitaris which is found in a closed cell is always placed on the egg of the Bee. This egg not only serves as a raft for the tiny creature floating on a very treacherous lake, but also provides it with its first meal. To get at this egg, in the centre of the lake of honey, to reach this raft which is also its first food, the young grub must somehow contrive to avoid the fatal touch of the honey. There is only one way in which this can be done. The clever grub, at the very moment when the Bee is laying her egg, slips off the Bee and on to the egg, and with it reaches the surface of the honey. The egg is too small to hold more than one grub, and that is why we never find more than one Sitaris in a cell. Such a performance on the part of a grub seems extraordinarily inspired—but then the study of insects constantly gives us examples of such inspiration.