What they saw I also see. My little larvæ frisk and fidget; curled at first in the shape of a ring, they uncurl themselves and curl again, if I do no more than slowly turn the small glass tube in which I have imprisoned them. When touched with the point of a needle, they struggle abruptly. Some succeed in shifting their position. While engaged in rearing the Odynerus’ egg, I opened the cell lengthwise, so as to reduce it to a semicylinder; in the little trench thus made, which was kept horizontal, I placed a few head of game. Next day usually I found that one of them had fallen out, a proof of movement, of a change of position, even when nothing was disturbing its repose. These larvæ, I am firmly convinced, have been wounded by the Odynerus’ sting, for she would not carry a rapier merely for show. Possessing a weapon, she employs it. However, the wound is so slight that Réaumur and Léon Dufour did not suspect its existence. To their mind the prey was alive; to mine it is very nearly alive. In these conditions we can see to what perils the Odynerus’ egg would be exposed but for exquisitely prudent precautions. There they are, those restless grubs, to the number of two dozen in one cell, side by side with the egg, which a mere nothing is enough to endanger. By what means will this very delicate germ escape the perils of the crowd? As I foresaw by my process of reasoning, the egg is slung from the ceiling of the cell. A very short thread fastens it to the top wall and lets it hang free in space. The first time that I saw this egg, quivering at the end of its thread at the least jerk and confirming by its oscillations the correctness of my theoretical views, I experienced one of those moments of inward joy which atone for much vexation and weariness. I was to have many more such moments, as will be seen. If we pursue our investigations in the insect world with loving patience and a practised eye, we always find some marvel in store for us. The egg, I was saying, swings from the ceiling, held by a very short and extremely fine thread. The cell is sometimes horizontal, sometimes slanting. In the first case, the egg hangs perpendicularly to the axis of the cell and its lower end approaches to within a twelfth of an inch of the opposite wall; in the second case, the vertical direction of the egg forms a more or less acute angle with that axis.