Latin antiquity called the Hoopoe Upupa; Greek antiquity named it Ἔποψ. But Pliny turned the ἔ into ou and must have pronounced the word Oupoupa, as the cry imitated by the name teaches me to do. Rarely have I received a lesson in Latin pronunciation better authenticated than yours, [21] you beautiful bird, who provide a diversion for my long hours of weariness. Faithful to your idiom, you say “Oopoopoo!” as you said in the days of Aristotle and Pliny, as you said when your note sounded for the first time. But our own idioms, our primitive idioms, what has become of them? The scholar cannot even recover their traces. Man alters; animals do not change. At last, here we are at last! See, the Odynerus arrives, with a flight as silent as the Eumenes’. She disappears into the curved cylinder of the vestibule, bringing home a grub beneath her abdomen. I place a small glass test-tube at the entrance to the nest. When the insect emerges, it will be caught. Done! The Wasp is caught and at once decanted into the asphyxiating-flask, with its strips of paper steeped in bisulphide of carbon. And now, my Dog, still lolling your tongue and frisking your tail, we can be off; the day has not been wasted. We will come back to-morrow. Upon investigation, my Odynerus does not correspond with what I expected to see. This is not the species of which Réaumur speaks (O. spinipes); nor is it the species studied by Dufour (O. Reaumurii); it is another. (O. reniformis, Latr.), a different one, though addicted to the same arts. Already the naturalist of the Landes had allowed himself to be deceived by that similarity in architecture, provisions and habits; he thought that he was observing Réaumur’s Solitary Wasp, whereas in reality his tube-builder presented specific differences.