Let us examine the burrow of a Hymenopteron, which provides beforehand for its larvæ. If we choose the moment when the insect enters with a captive, we shall find in the cell a certain number of victims already stored, but never a larva—not even an egg, for this is only laid when the provisions are complete. The egg deposited, the cell is closed, and the mother returns no more. It is, therefore, only in burrows where the mother’s visits are no longer needed that one can find larvæ amid the larger or smaller heap of food. Visit, on the other hand, the dwelling of a Bembex as she enters with the produce of her chase, and you are sure to find a larva, larger or smaller, amid the remains of food already devoured. The ration now brought is to continue a repast which has been going on for several days, and is to be prolonged upon the produce of future expeditions. If we can make this examination towards the end of the larva’s upbringing,—an advantage which I have enjoyed at pleasure,—we shall find upon a great heap of fragments a portly larva, to which the mother is still bringing food. The Bembex only ceases to do so and to leave the cell definitely when the larva, distended by a wine-coloured pap, refuses to eat, and reclines, thoroughly stuffed, on the remains of wings and feet of the game which it has devoured. Each time that she penetrates into the burrow on returning from the chase, the mother brings but a single fly. Were it possible by means of the remains contained in a cell where the larva is full grown to count the victims served up, one would at least know how often the Hymenopteron visited its burrow after the egg is laid. Unfortunately, these broken meats—munched and munched again in moments of scarcity—are for the most part unrecognisable. But on opening a cell with a less advanced nursling, one can examine the provisions, some of the prey being yet whole or nearly so, and others, more numerous, being trunks in sufficiently good preservation to be distinguishable. Incomplete as it is, the enumeration thus obtained strikes one with surprise, as showing what activity the Hymenopteron must display to satisfy the demands of such a table. Here is one of the bills of fare observed. At the end of July around the larva of Bembex Julia, which had almost reached the third of its full size, I found the prey of which the following is the list:—Six Echinomyia rubescens—two whole and four in pieces; four Syrphus corollæ—two whole, two in fragments; three Gonia atra—all intact, and one just brought by the mother, which had enabled me to discover the burrow; two Pollenia ruficollis—one whole, one attacked; a Bombylius reduced to pulp; two Echinomyia intermedia in bits; and finally two Pollenia floralis, also in bits—total, twenty. Certainly we have here a bill of fare as abundant as varied, but as the larva had only attained to a third of its complete size, the entire bill of fare might well amount to sixty articles.