Instead of dealing with a precise fact, really worthy of science, we have an enigma to find out. Let us continue to examine it. Several of the Crabronides are so like wasps in figure and form and shape and their yellow and black livery, that they might deceive any eye unpractised in the delicate distinctions of entomology. In the eyes of every one who has not made a special study of the subject, a Crabro is a wasp. Is it not possible that the English observer, regarding things from a lofty height, and considering unworthy of close examination the petty fact, which, however, was to serve to corroborate his transcendent views and grant reason to animals, may have in his turn committed an error, conversely and very excusably, by taking a wasp for one of the Crabronides? I could almost declare it is so, and for the following reasons. Wasps, if not always at any rate frequently, bring up their family on animal food, but instead of provisioning each cell they distribute nourishment singly to the larvæ, and several times in the day; feeding them from their mouths with soft pap, as the father and mother do young birds. This pap consists of mashed insects, ground down in the jaws of the nursing wasp; the insects preferred for it are Diptera, especially the common fly; if fresh meat offers itself it is largely used. Who has not seen wasps penetrate into our kitchens, or dart on the joints in a butcher’s shop, cut off some scrap of flesh which suits them, and carry away a tiny spoil for the use of their larvæ? When half-closed shutters allow a ray of light to fall on the floor of a room where the house-fly is taking a comfortable nap, or brushing its wings, who has not seen a wasp suddenly enter, pounce upon it, crush it in its jaws, and flee with the booty? This again is a dainty meal for the carnivorous nurslings. Sometimes the prey is at once dismembered, sometimes on the way, sometimes at the nest. The wings, in which there is no nourishment, are cut off and rejected; the feet, poor in juices, are also sometimes disdained. There remains a mutilated corpse, head, thorax, abdomen, or part thereof, which the wasp chews repeatedly to reduce into a pap for the larvæ to feast on. I have tried to bring up larvæ myself on fly-paste. The experiment was tried on a nest of Polistes gallica, the wasp which fixes her little rose-shaped nest of gray paper cells on the bough of some shrub. My kitchen apparatus was a piece of marble slab, on which I crushed up the fly-paste after cleaning my game—in other words, having taken away the parts which were too tough—wings and feet; and the feeding-spoon was a slender straw, at the end of which, going from cell to cell, I handed the food to larvæ, which opened their mouths just like young birds in a nest. I did just the same and succeeded just as well in the days when I used to bring up broods of sparrows—that joy of childhood! All went on as well as heart could wish as long as my patience held out against the