sand, and questions would have arisen to which no reply that would satisfy them could have been given. My request, moreover, would have turned these idlers into lookers-on, very embarrassing company in such studies, so I resolved to say nothing, and trust to my luck. Alas! alas! my star betrayed me. The heavy regulation boot was planted exactly on the Sphex’s roof. A shudder ran through me as though I had myself received the impress of the iron heel. The conscripts gone I proceeded to the salvage of the contents of the ruined burrow. There was the Sphex mutilated by the pressure, and there were not only the cricket which I saw carried down, but two others—three crickets in all instead of the usual grasshoppers. What was the reason of this strange variation? Were there no grasshoppers near the burrow, and did the distressed Hymenopteron do the best she could with Acridians—contenting herself as it were with blackbirds for want of thrushes, as the proverb says? I hesitate to believe it, for there was nothing in the neighbourhood to denote absence of her favourite game. Some happier means may unriddle this new problem. In any case S. flavipennis, either from imperious necessity, or from motives unknown to me, sometimes replaces her favourite prey, the grasshopper, by another, the Acridian, altogether unlike outwardly to the former, but still an Orthopteron. The observer on whose authority Lepeletier de St. Fargeau speaks of this Sphex’s habits witnessed in Africa, near Oran, a similar storing of Acridians. S. flavipennis was surprised by him dragging along an Acridian. Was it an accidental case, like the one seen by me on the banks of the Rhône? Was it the exception, or was it the rule? Were grasshoppers wanting around Oran, and did the Hymenopteron replace them by Acridians? Circumstances compel me to ask the question without finding a reply.