digging-implement, the local luchet, and on my back my game-bag with boxes,
bottles, trowel, glass tubes, tweezers, lenses and other impedimenta. A
large umbrella saves me from sunstroke. It is the most scorching hour of
the hottest day in the year. Exhausted by the heat, the Cicadae are
silent. The bronze-eyed Gad-flies seek a refuge from the pitiless sun under
the roof of my silken shelter; other large Flies, the sobre-hued Pangoniae,
dash themselves recklessly against my face.

The spot at which I have installed myself is a sandy clearing which I had
recognized the year before as a site beloved of the Scoliae. Here and there
are scattered thickets of holm-oak, whose dense undergrowth shelters a bed
of dead leaves and a thin layer of mould. My memory has served me well.
Here, sure enough, as the heat grows a little less, appear, coming I know
not from whence, some Two-banded Scoliae. The number increases; and it is
not long before I see very nearly a dozen of them about me, close enough
for observation. By their smaller size and more buoyant flight, they are
easily known for males. Almost grazing the ground, they fly softly, going
to and fro, passing and repassing in every direction. From time to time one
of them alights on the ground, feels the sand with his antennae and seems
to be enquiring into what is happening in the depths of the soil; then he
resumes his flight, alternately coming and going.

What are they waiting for? What are they seeking in these evolutions of
theirs, which are repeated a hundred times over? Food? No, for close beside
them stand several eryngo-stems, whose sturdy clusters are the Wasps' usual
resource at this season of parched vegetation; and not one of them settles
upon the flowers, not one of them seems to care about their sugary
exudations. Their attention is engrossed elsewhere. It is the ground, it is
the stretch of sand which they are so assiduously exploring; what they are
waiting for is the arrival of some female, who bursting the cocoon, may