With the Bembex it is quite otherwise. The mother constantly returns during the fortnight that she is bringing up the larva; she knows that her offspring is living among numerous intruders, who appropriate the greater part of the food; every time that she brings provender she touches and feels at the bottom of her den these detestable guests, who, far from contenting themselves with remains, seize what is best. She must perceive, however small her powers of arithmetic may be, that twelve are more than one; besides, she would discover this from the disproportion between the consumption of food and her means of hunting, and yet, instead of seizing these bold intruders and bundling them out, she serenely tolerates them. Tolerates! Why, she feeds them and brings them their rations, and perhaps feels as much tenderness for them as for her own larva. It is a new version of the cuckoo story in yet more singular circumstances. The theory that the cuckoo, almost as big as a sparrowhawk and coloured like it, should look imposing enough to introduce an egg unresisted into the nest of the weak hedge-sparrow, and that the latter, overawed perhaps by the alarming look of her toad-faced nursling, should accept and care for the stranger, has something in its favour. But what shall we say of a sparrow which, turning parasite, should go with splendid audacity and intrust her eggs to the eyrie of a bird of prey—the nest of the sparrowhawk itself—the sanguinary devourer of sparrows? What should we say of the bird of prey who should accept the charge and bring up the brood tenderly? It is precisely thus that the Bembex acts,—she, a captor of Diptera who yet brings up other Diptera—a huntress who distributes food to a prey whose last repast will be her own disembowelled offspring! I leave to cleverer people the task of explaining these amazing relations.