What I do see, without any lengthy investigations, is the logical method whereby the Pelopæus makes the most of the corpses threatened with speedy putrefaction. To begin with, each cell contains a number of victims. The carcase actually attacked by the larva, ground between its mandibles, abandoned and attacked at another point, soon becomes a shapeless and disorganized mass, more liable than ever to putrefy. But it is small and is therefore consumed at a single sitting, before decomposition overtakes it; for once the larva has bitten into a Spider it does not turn elsewhere for food. The others therefore remain intact, which is enough to preserve them in a condition of suitable freshness during the brief period of nourishment. The numerous items composing the ration, consumed in order, one by one, are thus preserved for some days, notwithstanding that they are corpses. Imagine, on the other hand, a single item, big enough to furnish the whole banquet; the conditions would become detestable. Nibbled here and there, the generous morsel, with its many wounds, would become a fatal mess of putrescence long before it was finished; it would poison the grub with the serum resulting from the wounds. A dish of this kind, single and sumptuous, demands, as a preliminary, the maintenance of organic life, together with the abolition of all movement, in a word, paralysis. It also demands, on the consumer’s part, a special art of eating, an art that respects the more essential and attacks the less essential by degrees, as the Scoliæ and Spheges [41] have shown us. For reasons which escape me, the Pelopæus is unacquainted with the paralysers’ art, nor does her larva know how a bulky piece of game may be consumed without danger. She is therefore very happily inspired when she provides her family with a large number of small game. The restricted capacity of the store-houses is not the main motive that dictates her choice: there would be nothing to deter the potter from making bigger pickle-jars, were there any advantage to be gained. The preservation of dead victuals is of the foremost consequence; and, to achieve it within the brief limits of the feeding-period, the huntress fills her bag with none but the smaller Spiders. Better still: if I open cells that have been recently closed, I always find the egg, not on the surface of the heap, on the last Spider supplied, but right at the bottom, on the piece earliest in date, the first to be stored. Whenever I witness the start of the provisioning, I see the egg lying on the single Spider wherewith the cell is then provided. There is no exception to the rule: the Pelopæus at once fixes her egg on the first morsel served up, before resuming the chase to complete the ration. The Bembeces deal similarly with their dead Flies: the first carcase stowed away receives the egg.