If I knew the exact period at which the Hairy Ammophila emerges from her native burrow, this would help me greatly; but, to my intense regret, I do not know it. My notes, collected day by day, with the lack of order inevitable in a type of research that is constantly subject to the hazards of the unforeseen, are silent on this point, of which I clearly perceive the importance now that I am trying to arrange my materials in order to write these lines. I find the Sandy Ammophila mentioned as hatching on the 5th of June and the Silvery Ammophila on the 20th of that month; but my records contain not a word that relates to the hatching of the Hairy Ammophila. It is a detail which, by an oversight, has never been cleared up. The dates given for the other two species come under the general law, which lays down that the perfect insect shall appear during the hot season. I fix the same period, by analogy, as that for the Hairy Ammophila’s emergence from the cocoon. Then whence come the Ammophilæ whom we see working at their burrows at the end of March and in April? We are driven to the conclusion that these Wasps belong not to the present but to the previous year; that they left their cells at the usual time, in June and July, got through the winter and began to make their nests as soon as the spring came. In a word, they are hibernating insects. And this conclusion is fully borne out by experiment. If we will but search patiently in the perpendicular banks of earth or sand facing due south, especially those in which generations of different honey-gathering Bees have succeeded one another year after year and riddled the wall with a labyrinth of tunnels until it looks like an enormous sponge, we are almost sure, in midwinter, to find the Hairy Ammophila snugly ensconced in the shelters provided by the sunny bank, alone or in groups of three or four, idly awaiting the arrival of the fine weather. I have been able to give myself as often as I wished this little treat of renewing my acquaintance, amid the gloom and cold of winter, with the pretty Wasp who enlivens the greensward beside the paths at the first notes of the Bunting and the Cricket. When there is no wind and the sun is shining brightly, the warmth-loving insect comes to its threshold to bask luxuriously in the hottest rays, or it will even timidly venture outside and, step by step, stroll over the surface of the spongy bank, polishing its wings as it goes. Even so does the little Grey Lizard behave, when the sun once more begins to warm the old wall that represents his native land.