In the presence of these singular predilections, which seem to have limits laid down by some master of classification,—a Latreille for instance—it becomes interesting to inquire if foreign Sphegidæ hunt game of the same order. Unfortunately information as to this is scanty or absolutely nil as regards most species. This regrettable lack is chiefly caused by the superficial method generally adopted. An insect is caught, transfixed with a long pin, fastened in a box with a cork bottom; a ticket with a Latin name is put under its feet, and all is said. This way of looking at entomological history does not satisfy me. It is useless to tell me that such a species has so many joints in its antennæ, so many nerves in its wings, so many hairs on a part of the abdomen or thorax; I do not really know the creature until I have learned its manner of life, its instincts and habits. And observe what a luminous superiority has a description of the latter kind, given in two or three words over long descriptions, sometimes so hard to understand. Let us suppose that you want to introduce Sphex occitanica to me; you describe the number and arrangement of the wing nerves, and you speak of cubital and recurrent nerves; next follows the written description of the insect. Here it is black, there rusty red, smoky brown at the wing tips, at such a spot it is black velvet, at another silvery down, and at a third smooth. It is all very precise, very minute—one must grant that much justice to the clear-sighted patience of him who describes; but it is very long, and besides, not always easy to follow, to such a degree that one may be excused for being sometimes a little bewildered, even when not altogether a novice. But add to the tedious description just this—hunts ephippigers, and with these two words light shines at once; there can be no mistake about my Sphex, none other selecting that prey. And to illuminate the subject thus, what was needed? Real observation, and not to let entomology consist in rows of impaled insects. But let us pass on and consider such little as is known as to the manner in which foreign Sphegidæ hunt. I open Lepeletier de St. Fargeau’s History of Hymenoptera, and find that on the other side of the Mediterranean, in our Algerian provinces, S. flavipennis and S. albisecta have the same tastes that characterise them here. In the land of palms they catch Orthoptera just as they do in the land of olives. Although separated by the width of the sea, these sporting fellow citizens of the Kabyle and the Berber hunt the same game as their relatives in Provence. I see mentioned a fourth species, S. afra, as hunting crickets round Oran. Moreover, I have a recollection of having read—I know not where—of a fifth species, which makes war on crickets upon the steppes in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea. Thus in the lands bordering the Mediterranean we have five different species whose larvæ all live on Orthoptera.