The Volucella’s egg remains where it is, with its white colouring strongly marked against the grey background of the support; The shell wrinkles and collapses; and the fore-end tears open. From it there issues a pretty little white grub, thin in front, widening slightly in the rear and bristling all over with fleshy papillæ. These papillæ are set, on the creature’s sides, like the teeth of a comb; at the rear, they lengthen and spread into a fan; on the back, they are shorter and arranged in four longitudinal rows. The last segment but one carries two short, bright-red breathing-tubes, standing aslant and joined to each other. The forepart, near the pointed mouth, is of a darker, brownish colour. This is the biting- and motor-apparatus, seen through the skin and consisting of two fang’s. Taken all round, the grub is a comely little thing, with its bristling whiteness, which gives it the appearance of a tiny snow-flake. But this elegance does not last long: grown big and strong, the Volucella’s grub becomes soiled with sanies, turns russet-brown and crawls about in the guise of a hulking Porcupine. What becomes of it when it leaves the egg? This my warehousing-jar tells me, partly. Unable to keep its balance on sloping surfaces, it drops to the bottom of the receptacle, where I find it daily, as and when hatched, restlessly wandering. Things must happen likewise at the Wasps’. Incapable of standing on the slant of the paper wall, the new-born grubs slide to the bottom of the underground cavity, which contains, especially at the end of the summer, a plentiful provender of deceased Wasps and dead larvæ removed from the cells and flung outside, all nice and gamy, as proper maggot’s-food should be. The Volucella’s offspring, themselves maggots, notwithstanding their snowy apparel, find in this charnel-house victuals to their liking, incessantly renewed. Their fall from the high walls might well be not accidental but rather a means of reaching, quickly and without searching, the good things down at the bottom of the cavern. Perhaps, also, some of the white grubs, thanks to the holes that make the wrapper resemble a spongy cover, manage to slip inside the Wasps’-nest. Still, most of the Volucella’s larvæ, at whatever stage of their development, are in the basement of the burrow, among the carrion remains. The others, those settled in the Wasps’ home itself, are comparatively few. These returns are enough to show us that the grubs of the Volucella do not deserve the bad reputation that has been given them. Satisfied with the spoils of the dead, they do not touch the living; they do not ravage the Wasps’-nest, they disinfect it.