There are good people like that, only too happy to serve science
with resounding appellations that might come from Timbuktu; they
cannot name you a midge without striking terror into you. O ye
wise and revered ones, ye christeners of animals, I am willing, in
my study, to make use--but not undue use--of your harsh
terminology, with its conglomeration of syllables; but there is a
danger of their leaving the sanctum and appearing before the
public, which is always ready to show its lack of deference for
terms that do not respect its ears. I, wishing to speak like
everybody else, so that I may be understood by all, and persuaded
that science has no need of this Brobdignagian jargon, make a
point of avoiding technical nomenclature when it becomes too
barbarous, when it threatens to lumber the page the moment my pen
attempts it. And so I abandon Monodontomerus.

It is a puny little insect, almost as tiny as the midges whom we
see eddying in a ray of sunshine at the end of autumn. Its dress
is golden bronze; its eyes are coral red. It carries a naked
sword, that is to say, the sheath of its drill stands out slantwise
at the tip of its belly, instead of lying in a hollow groove along
the back, as it does with the Leucospis. This scabbard holds the
latter half of the inoculating filament, which extends below the
animal to the base of the abdomen. In short, its utensil is that
of the Leucospis, with this difference, that its lower half sticks
out like a rapier.

This mite that bears a sword upon her rump is yet another
persecutor of the mason bees and not one of the least formidable.
She exploits their nests at the same time as the Leucospis. I see