I rear some young Philanthus-grubs, already waxing large; but, instead of supplying them with the prey taken from the burrows, I give them game of my own catching, game replete with nectar from the rosemaries. My Bees, whom I kill by crushing their heads, are readily accepted; and I at first see nothing that corresponds with my suspicions. Then my nurselings languish, disdain their food, give a careless bite here and there and end by perishing, from the first to the last, beside their unfinished victuals. All my attempts miscarry: I do not once succeed in rearing my larvae to the stage of spinning the cocoon. And yet I am no novice in the functions of a foster-father. How many pupils have not passed through my hands and reached maturity in my old sardine-boxes as comfortably as in their natural burrows! I will not draw rash conclusions from this check; I am conscientious enough to ascribe it to another cause. It may be that the atmosphere of my study and the dryness of the sand serving as a bed have had a bad effect on my charges, whose tender skins are accustomed to the warm moisture of the subsoil. Let us therefore try another expedient. It is hardly feasible to decide positively by the methods which I have been following whether the honey is or is not repugnant to the grubs of the Philanthus. The first mouthfuls consist of meat; and then nothing particular occurs: it is the natural diet. The honey is met with later, when the morsel has been largely bitten into. If hesitation and lack of appetite are displayed at this stage, they come too late in the day to be conclusive: the larva's discomfort may be due to other, known or unknown, causes. The thing to do would be to offer the grub honey from the first, before artificial rearing has affected its appetite. It is useless, of course, to make the attempt with pure honey: no carnivorous creature would touch it, though it were starving. The jam-sandwich is the only device favourable to my plans, a meagre jam-sandwich, that is to say, the dead Bee lightly smeared or varnished with honey by means of a camel's-hair pencil. Under these conditions, the problem is solved with the first few mouthfuls. The grub that has bitten into the honeyed prey draws back in disgust, hesitates a long time and then, urged by hunger, begins again, tries this side and that and ends by refusing to touch the dish. For a few days it pines away on top of its almost intact provisions; then it dies. All that are subjected to this regimen succumb. Do they merely perish of inanition in the presence of an unaccustomed food, which revolts their appetite, or are they poisoned by the small quantity of honey absorbed with the early mouthfuls? I cannot tell. The fact remains that, whether poisonous or repugnant, the Bee in the state of bread and jam is death to them; and this result explains, more clearly than the unfavourable circumstance of my former experiment, my failures with the Bee that had not been made to disgorge.