Two or three days elapse; the egg hatches and the little larva eats up the choice ration served to it. Meanwhile the mother remains in the neighbourhood and you see her sometimes feeding herself by sipping the sugary exudations of the field eringo, sometimes settling happily on the burning sand, no doubt watching the outside of the house. Every now and again she sifts the sand at the entrance; then she flies away and disappears, perhaps to dig other cells elsewhere and to stock them in the same way. But, however long she may stay away, she never forgets the young larva so scantily provided for; the instinct of a mother tells her the hour when the grub has finished its food and is calling for fresh nourishment. She therefore returns to the nest, of which she is wonderfully capable of discovering the invisible entrance; she goes down into the earth, this time carrying a bulkier piece of game. After depositing her prey, she again leaves the house and waits outside till the moment arrives to serve a third course. This moment is not slow in coming, for the larva devours its food with a lusty appetite. Again the mother appears with fresh provisions. During nearly a fortnight, while the larva is growing up, the meals thus follow in succession, one by one, as needed, and coming closer together as the nurseling waxes bigger. Towards the end of the fortnight it takes all the mother’s activity to satisfy the appetite of the glutton, who crawls heavily along with his great lumbering belly, amid the scorned leavings: rejected wings and legs and horny abdominal segments. You see her at every moment returning with a recent capture, at every moment setting out again upon the chase. In short, the Bembex brings up her family from day to day, without storing up provisions in advance, just as the bird does, which feeds its nestlings from hand to mouth. Of the many proofs that are evidence of this method of upbringing, a very singular method for a Wasp who feeds her offspring on prey, I have already mentioned the presence of the egg in a cell containing no provisions but one small Fly, never more. And here is another one, which can be verified at any time.