If so, I will take the opportunity of putting to him a second problem that puzzles me: the carelessness, nay, more, the stupidity of the Bee in the presence of the Philanthus. You would be inclined to think that the victim of persecution, learning gradually from the misfortunes suffered by her family, would show distress at the ravisher's approach and at least attempt to escape. In my cages I see nothing of the sort. Once the first excitement due to incarceration under the bell-glass or the wire-gauze cover has passed, the Bee seems hardly to trouble about her formidable neighbour. I see one side by side with the Philanthus on the same honeyed thistle-head: assassin and future victim are drinking from the same flask. I see some one who comes heedlessly to enquire who that stranger can be, crouching in wait on the table. When the spoiler makes her rush, it is usually at a Bee who meets her half-way, and, so to speak, flings herself into her clutches, either thoughtlessly or out of curiosity. There is no wild terror, no sign of anxiety, no tendency to make off. How comes it that the experience of the ages, that experience which, we are told, teaches the animal so many things, has not taught the Bee the first element of apiarian wisdom: a deep-seated horror of the Philanthus? Can the poor wretch take comfort by relying on her trusty dagger? But she yields to none in her ignorance of fencing; she stabs without method, at random. However, let us watch her at the supreme moment of the killing. When the ravisher makes play with her sting, the Bee does the same with hers and furiously. I see the needle now moving this way or that way in space, now slipping, violently curved, along the murderess' convex surface. These sword-thrusts have no serious results. The manner in which the two combatants are at grips has this effect, that the Philanthus' abdomen is inside and the Bee's outside. The latter's sting therefore finds under its point only the dorsal surface of the foe, a convex, slippery surface and so well armoured as to be almost invulnerable. There is here no breach into which the weapon can slip by accident; and so the operation is conducted with absolute surgical safety, notwithstanding the indignant protests of the patient.