Almost the whole day, the mother remains clinging to one spot on the fruit, motionless, with her rostrum driven into the pulp. As a rule, there is no movement on her part, nothing to betray any effort. From time to time a male visits her, climbs on her back, throws his legs around her and, himself swaying from side to side, rocks her very gently to and fro. Without permitting herself to be diverted from her serious labours, the female thus embraced passively yields to the rolling motion. Perhaps it is a means of whiling away the long hours needed for establishing an egg. To see more than this is very difficult. The rostrum does its work in the hidden seclusion of the pulp and, as the pit opens and widens, the digger covers it with the fore-part of her body. The hollow is ready. The mother withdraws and turns round. For a moment I catch a glimpse of the bare stone at the bottom of the crater, with a tiny cup in the centre of the denuded area. As soon as the egg is laid in this cup, the insect turns round again and nothing more is visible until the work is completed. How does the pregnant mother contrive to raise above the egg a protective heap, a cone, an obelisk somewhat irregular in shape, but very curious with its narrow ventilating-shaft? Above all, how does she manage to make this communicating passage in the soft mass? These are details which we can scarcely hope to detect, so discreetly does the insect work. We must be content to know that the rostrum alone, without the aid of the legs, digs the crater and erects the central cone. In the heat of June, less than a week is enough for the hatching. By good fortune, solicited, so far as that goes, by attempts that come near to exhausting my small stock of patience, I witness an interesting sight. I have a new-born grub before my eyes. It has just cast the skin of the egg; it is very busily wriggling in its powdery cup. Why so much excitement? For this reason: to reach the kernel, its ration, the tiny creature has to finish the pit and turn it into an entrance-window. A stupendous task for a speck of albumen. But this feeble speck boasts a set of carpenter’s tools; its mandibles, a pair of fine chisels, received the necessary temper while their owner was still in the egg. The grub sets to work immediately. By the following day, through a tiny aperture which would hardly admit the point of a fair-sized needle, it has entered into the promised land and is in possession of the kernel. Another stroke of luck partly tells me the use of the central cone pierced chimney-fashion. The mother, while sinking the pit in the flesh of the sloe, drinks the juices that ooze out and eats the pulp. This is the most direct manner of getting rid of the refuse without interrupting her work. When she is digging in the surface of the stone, the cup intended to receive the egg, she leaves in place the fine dust resulting from her labours, an excellent material as bedding for the egg but useless as food.