The verification of this magnificent sum-total is easily obtained. I myself will undertake the maternal cares of the Bembex, and feed the larva until it is thoroughly satisfied. I place the cell in a little cardboard box furnished with a layer of sand. On this bed is placed the larva with due regard to its delicate epidermis. Around it, without omitting a single fragment, I arrange the provender with which it was supplied, and return home with the box still in my hand, to avoid any shake which might turn it topsy-turvy and endanger my charge during a journey of several miles. Any one who had seen me on the dusty road to Nîmes, exhausted with fatigue and bearing religiously in my hand, as the only result of my painful journey, a wretched grub, distending itself with a heap of flies, would assuredly have smiled at my simplicity. The journey was achieved without hindrance; when I got home the larva was peacefully consuming its flies as if nothing had happened. On the third day the provisions taken from the burrow were finished, and the grub with its pointed mouth was searching in the heap of remains without finding anything to its taste. The dry, horny, juiceless pieces which it got hold of were rejected with disgust. The moment had come for me to continue the food supply. The first Diptera within reach must content my prisoner; I slew them by squeezing them between my fingers, but did not crush them. Three Eristalis tenax composed the first ration, together with a Sarcophaga. In twenty-four hours all were devoured. The next day I provided two Eristalis and four house-flies. This sufficed for that day, but nothing was left over. I went on thus for a week, giving the grub each morning a larger ration. On the ninth day it refused to eat and began to spin its cocoon. The bill of fare for the week’s high feeding amounted to sixty-two items, chiefly Eristalis and house-flies, which, added to the twenty items found entire or in fragments in the cell, formed a total of eighty-two.