Here is something more remarkable still: the mother, after prolonged hesitation, at last enters the roofless trench, all that remains of the original corridor. She goes forward, draws back, goes forward again, giving a few careless sweeps, here and there, without stopping. Guided by vague recollections and perhaps also by the smell of game emitted by the heap of Flies, she occasionally reaches the end of the gallery, the very spot at which the larva lies. Mother and son are now together. At this moment of meeting after long suffering, have we a display of eager solicitude, exuberant affection, any signs whatever of maternal joy? If you think so, you need only repeat my experiments to persuade yourself to the contrary. The Bembex does not recognize her larva at all; it is to her a worthless thing, something in her way, a nuisance. She walks over the grub, treads on it ruthlessly, as she hurries to and fro. When she wants to try and dig at the bottom of the cell, she thrusts it back with a brutal kick; she shoves it on one side, topples it over, flings it out as unceremoniously as if it were a big bit of gravel that hindered her in her work. Thus knocked about, the grub thinks of defending itself. I have seen it seize its mother by the tarsus with no more ceremony than it shows when it bites off the leg of its prey, the Fly. The struggle was hotly contested; but at last the fierce mandibles let go and the mother vanished in terror, making a shrill whimpering noise with her wings. This unnatural sight of the son biting his mother and perhaps even trying to eat her is uncommon and is brought about by circumstances which the observer has not at his command; but what can always be witnessed is the Wasp’s profound indifference towards her offspring and the brutal contempt with which she treats that irksome lump of rubbish, the grub. Once she has raked out the end of the passage, which is the work of a moment, the Bembex returns to her favourite spot, the threshold, where she resumes her useless search. As for the grub, it continues to writhe and wriggle wherever its mother has kicked it. It will die without the mother’s coming to its assistance, for she fails to recognize it because she was unable to find the customary passage. Go back to-morrow and you shall see it lying in its trench, half baked by the sun and already a prey to the very Flies that were once its prey.