Though the green carpet was continued for a considerable distance along the side of the road, I could not detect a single Meloe-larva elsewhere than in the few square yards lying in front of the bank inhabited by the Mason-bee. These larvae therefore could not have come far; to find themselves near the Anthophorae they had had no long pilgrimage to make, for there was not a sign of the inevitable stragglers and laggards that follow in the wake of a travelling caravan. The burrows in which the eggs were hatched were therefore in that turf opposite the Bees' abode. Thus the Oil-beetles, far from laying their eggs at random, as their wandering life might lead one to suppose, and leaving their young to the task of approaching their future home, are able to recognize the spots haunted by the Anthophorae and lay their eggs in the near neighbourhood of those spots. With such a multitude of parasites occupying the composite flowers in close proximity to the Anthophora's nests, it is impossible that the majority of the swarm should not become infested sooner or later. At the time of my observations, a comparatively tiny proportion of the starving legion was waiting on the flowers; the others were still wandering on the ground, where the Anthophorae very rarely alight; and yet I detected the presence of several Meloe-larvae in the thoracic down of nearly all the Anthophorae which I caught and examined. I have also found them on the bodies of the Melecta- and Coelioxys-bees,[4] who are parasitic on the Anthophorae. Suspending their audacious patrolling before the galleries under construction, these spoilers of the victualled cells alight for an instant on a camomile-flower and lo, the thief is robbed! A tiny, imperceptible louse has slipped into the thick of the downy fur and, at the moment when the parasite, after destroying the Anthophora's egg, is laying her own upon the stolen honey, will creep upon this egg, destroy it in its turn and remain sole mistress of the provisions. The mess of honey amassed by the Anthophora will thus pass through the hands of three owners and remain finally the property of the weakest of the three. [Footnote 4: Cf. _The Mason-bees_: chaps. viii. and ix.--_Translator's Note_.]