In the glass jars in which I kept my Sitares I saw the pairing follow very closely upon the first moments of freedom. I even witnessed a fact which shows emphatically how imperious, in the perfect insect, is the need to perform, without delay, the act intended to ensure the preservation of its race. A female, with her head already cut out of the shell, is anxiously struggling to release herself entirely; a male, who has been free for a couple of hours, climbs on the shell and, tugging here and there, with his mandibles, at the fragile envelope, strives to deliver the female from her shackles. His efforts are soon crowned with success; and, though the female is still three parts swathed in her swaddling-bands, the coupling takes place immediately, lasting about a minute. During the act, the male remains motionless on the top of the shell, or on the top of the female when the latter is entirely free. I do not know whether, in ordinary circumstances, the male occasionally thus helps the female to gain her liberty; to do so he would have to penetrate into a cell containing a female, which, after all, is not beyond his powers, seeing that he has been able to escape from his own. Still, on the actual site of the cells, the coupling is generally performed at the entrance to the galleries of the Anthophorae; and then neither of the sexes drags about with it the least shred of the shell from which it has emerged. After mating, the two Sitares proceed to clean their legs and antennae by drawing them between their mandibles; then each goes his own way. The male cowers in a crevice of the earthen bank, lingers for two or three days and perishes. The female also, after getting rid of her eggs, which she does without delay, dies at the entrance to the corridor in which the eggs are laid. This is the origin of all those corpses swinging in the Spiders' web with which the neighbourhood of the Anthophora's dwellings is upholstered. Thus the Sitares in the perfect state live long enough only to mate and to lay their eggs. I have never seen one save upon the scene of their loves, which is also that of their death; I have never surprised one browsing on the plants near at hand, so that, though they are provided with a normal digestive apparatus, I have grave reasons to doubt whether they actually take any nourishment whatever. What a life is theirs! A fortnight's feasting in a storehouse of honey; a year of slumber underground; a minute of love in the sunlight; then death!