Ah, I confess that it needed a robust faith to cherish the audacious hope of discovering anything further when the masters had seen nothing! I read and reread Réaumur’s essay on the Solitary Wasp. The Insect’s Herodotus gives us a host of particulars, but says nothing, absolutely nothing, about the hanging egg. I consult Léon Dufour, [15] who treats subjects of this kind with his usual raciness: he has seen the egg; he describes it; but of the suspension-thread not a word. I consult Lepeletier, [16] Audouin, [17] Blanchard: [18] they are absolutely silent on the means of protection which I expect to find. Is it possible that a detail of such great importance can have escaped all these observers? Am I the dupe of my imagination? Is the protective system, though proved to my mind by close logical reasoning, merely one of my dreams? Either the Eumenes have lied to me or my hopes are justified. As a disciple rebelling against his masters, a disciple strong in arguments which I believed invincible, I set to work investigating, convinced that I should succeed. And I did succeed; I found what I was looking for; I found something better still. Let me set things down in detail. There are various Odyneri established in my neighbourhood. I know one who takes possession of the abandoned nests of Eumenes Amadei. This nest, a structure of unusual solidity, is not a ruin when its owner moves away; it loses only its neck. The cupola, preserved untouched, is a fortified retreat of too convenient a nature to remain vacant. Some Spider adopts the cavern, after lining it with silk; Osmiæ [19] take refuge in it in rainy weather, or else make it their dormitory, wherein to spend the night; an Odynerus divides it, by means of clay partitions, into three or four chambers, which become the cradles of as many larvæ. A second species uses the deserted nests of the Pelopæus; [20] a third, removing the pith from a dry bramble-stem, obtains, for the use of her family, a long sheath, which she subdivides into stories; a fourth bores a gallery in the dead wood of some fig-tree; a fifth digs herself a shaft in the soil of a footpath and surmounts it with a cylindrical, vertical kerb. All these industries are worth studying, but I should have preferred to discover that which Réaumur and Dufour have rendered famous.