labours, either to come and dust herself in the sun, to rid herself of the grains of sand which, slipping into her delicate joints, might hamper the liberty of her movements, or else to reconnoitre the neighbourhood. Despite these interruptions, which for that matter do not last long, the gallery is dug in the space of a few hours; and the Sphex comes to her threshold to chant her triumph and give the finishing polish to her work by removing some unevenness and carrying away a speck or two of earth whose drawbacks are perceptible to her discerning eye alone. Of the numerous tribes of Sphex-wasps which I have visited, one in particular remains fixed in my memory because of its curious dwelling-place. On the edge of a high-road were some small heaps of mud, taken from the ditches by the road-mender’s shovel. One of these heaps, long ago dried in the sun, formed a cone-shaped mound, resembling a large sugar-loaf twenty inches high. The site seemed to have attracted the Wasps, who had established themselves there in a more populous colony than I have ever since beheld. The cone of dry mud was riddled from top to bottom with burrows, which gave it the appearance of an enormous sponge. On every storey there was a feverish animation, a busy coming and going which reminded one of the scenes in some great yard when the work is urgent. Crickets were being dragged by the antennæ up the slopes of the conical city; victuals were being stored in the larders of the cells; dust was pouring from the galleries in process of excavation by the miners; grimy faces appeared at intervals at the mouths of the tunnels; there were constant exits and constant entrances; and now and again a Sphex, in her brief intervals of leisure, would climb to the top of the cone, perhaps to cast a look of satisfaction from this belvedere over the works in general. What a spectacle to tempt me, to make me long to carry the whole city and its inhabitants away with me! It was useless even to try: the mass was too heavy. One cannot root up a village from its foundations to transplant it elsewhere.