‘My attention was attracted by a small heap of sand freshly thrown up and forming a sort of tiny mole-hill. On raking it, I saw that it masked the opening of a shaft running some way down. With a spade we carefully turned over the soil and soon saw the glittering wing-cases of the coveted Buprestis lying scattered around. Presently I discovered not only isolated and fragmentary wing-cases, but a whole Buprestis, then three or four of them, displaying their emerald and gold. I could not believe my eyes. ‘But this was only a prelude to the feast. In the chaos of rubbish produced by the exhumation, a Wasp appeared and fell into my hands: it was the kidnapper of the Buprestes, trying to escape from among her victims. In this burrowing insect I recognized an old acquaintance, a Cerceris whom I have found hundreds of times, both in Spain and round about Saint-Sever. ‘My ambition was far from satisfied. It was not enough for me to identify the kidnapper and her victim: I wanted the larva, the sole consumer of those rich provisions. After exhausting this first vein of Buprestes, I hastened to make fresh excavations and, planting my spade more carefully still, I at last succeeded in discovering two larvæ which crowned the good fortune of this campaign. In less than an hour I ransacked the haunts of three Cerceres; and my booty was some fifteen whole Buprestes, with fragments of a still larger number. I calculated, keeping, I believe, well within the mark, that this particular garden contained five-and-twenty nests, making an enormous total of buried Buprestes. What must it be, I thought, in places where in a few hours I have caught on the garlic-flowers as many as sixty Cerceres, whose nests were apparently in the neighbourhood and no doubt victualled just as abundantly? And so my imagination, never going beyond the bounds of probability, showed me underground, within a small radius, Buprestis fasciata by the thousand, whereas, during the thirty years and upwards that I have been studying the entomology of this district, I never discovered a single one in the open.