With my memory full of the prowess of the Buprestis-huntress, I watched for an opportunity to observe in my turn the labours of the Cerceres; and I watched to such good purpose that I ended by being successful. True, the Wasp was not the one celebrated by Léon Dufour, with her sumptuous victuals whose remains, when unearthed, suggest the dust of some nugget broken by the gold-miner’s pick: it was a kindred species, a gigantic brigand who contents herself with humbler prey; in short, it was Cerceris tuberculata or C. major, the largest and most powerful of the genus. The last fortnight in September is the time when our Burrowing Wasp digs her lairs and buries in their depths the victim destined for her grubs. The site of the home, always selected with discrimination, is subject to those mysterious laws which differ in different species but are invariable throughout any one species. Léon Dufour’s Cerceris requires a level, well-trodden, compact soil, such as that of a path, to prevent the possibility of landslips and other damage which would ruin her gallery at the first shower of rain. Ours, on the contrary, is not very particular about the nature of her soil, but must have that soil vertical. With this slight architectural modification, she avoids most of the dangers that might threaten her gallery; and consequently she digs her burrows indifferently in a loose and slightly clayey soil and in the soft sand of the Molasse formation, which makes the work of excavation much easier. The only indispensable condition appears to be that the earth should be dry and exposed to the sun’s rays for the best part of the day. It is therefore in the steep roadside banks, in the sides of the ravines hollowed by the rains in the sandstone, that our Wasp elects to establish her home. These conditions are common in the neighbourhood of Carpentras, in the part known as the Hollow Road; and it is here that I have observed Cerceris tuberculata in her largest numbers and that I gathered most of my facts relating to her history. The choice of this vertical site is not enough for her: other precautions are taken to guard against the inevitable rains of the season, which is already far advanced. If there be some bit of hard sandstone projecting like a ledge, if there be naturally hollowed in the ground some hole large enough to put one’s fist in, it will be under that shelter or in this cavity that she contrives her gallery, thus adding a natural vestibule to the edifice of her own construction. Though no sort of communism exists among them, these insects nevertheless like to associate in small numbers; and I have always observed their nests in groups of about ten at least, with the orifices, which are usually pretty far apart, sometimes close enough to touch one another.