Let us consider the facts. One of these Hymenoptera whose impeccable science we were admiring just now, a Languedocian Sphex, is busy closing the burrow in which she has laid her egg with its store of game. We brush her aside, and plunder her nest before her eyes. Directly the passage is free, she enters and remains for a few moments. Then she emerges and proceeds to stop up the cell, as though nothing were the matter, as though she had not found her burrow empty, as though the work of closing the cell had still a motive. [175] The Mason-Bee, excellently endowed in the matter of boring, emerges from her nest of mortar by piercing the earthen dome which covers it. Let us cover the nest from which the Bee is about to emerge with a little paper bag. If the bag is placed in contact with the nest so as to make one piece with it, so to speak, the Bee perforates it and liberates herself. If it is not in contact with the nest, she remains imprisoned and will let herself die without perforating the bag. “Here, then, are sturdy insects for whom boring tufa is mere child’s play, which will stupidly let themselves perish imprisoned by a paper bag,” [176] to which it does not even occur to bite a second time through the frail envelope through which they have already bitten once when it was, so to speak, part of the earthen enclosure. The Wasp, which is such a marvellous architect, and so skilful a digger, is no better able to employ her talents. During the night we place a bell-glass over a Wasp’s nest. In the morning the Wasps issue forth and struggle against the glass wall, but not one of them dreams of digging at the foot of the treacherous circle. But one Wasp, of several which have strayed from the community, coming from outside, opens up a way to the nest under the edge of the bell-glass, which is a natural enough proceeding for an insect returning from the fields, who may have to gain her nest through falls of earth in the entry. But even this particular Wasp cannot repeat the operation in order to emerge from the bell-glass, and the whole community eventually die prisoners after a week of futile agitation. The entomologist finds this ineptness of the Wasp repeated in the Necrophori, who nevertheless have a great reputation for intelligence, and, in general, in all the insects which he has had occasion to rear under a bell-glass. The larva is subject to the same absurdities as the adult insect. The Scolia’s larva, which eats in such a scientific manner, is quite unable to apply its remarkable talents the moment it is off the beaten track. Placed on the victim’s back at a spot which is not the normal point of attack, placed on a Cetonia-grub that is immobilised without being paralysed, or merely removed for a moment from its position, it is no longer able to do anything right.