[Footnote 8: .026 inch.--_Translator's Note_.]
Enlightened by these observations and informed of the shape, the number and the arrangement of the eggs, I searched the galleries of the Anthophoræ for those which the Sitares had laid there and invariably found them gathered in a heap inside the galleries, at a distance of an inch or two from the orifice, which is always open to the outer world. Thus, contrary to what one was to some extent entitled to suppose, the eggs are not laid in the cells of the pioneer Bee; they are simply dumped in a heap inside the entrance to her dwelling. Nay more, the mother does not make any protective structure for them; she takes no pains to shield them from the rigours of winter; she does not even attempt, by stopping for a short distance, as best she can, the entrance-lobby in which she has laid them, to protect them from the thousand enemies that threaten them; for, as long as the frosts of winter have not arrived, these open galleries are trodden by Spiders, by Acari, by Anthrenus-grubs and other plunderers, to whom these eggs, or the young larvæ about to emerge from them, must be a dainty feast. In consequence of the mother's heedlessness, the number of those who escape all these voracious hunters and the inclemencies of the weather must be curiously small. This perhaps explains why she is compelled to make up by her fecundity for her deficient industry.
The hatching occurs a month later, about the end of September or the beginning of October. The season being still propitious, I was led to suppose that the young larvæ must at once make a start and disperse, in order that each might seek to gain access, through some imperceptible fissure, to an Anthophora-cell. This presumption turned out to be entirely at fault. In the boxes in which I had placed the eggs laid by my captives, the young larvæ, little black creatures at most a twenty-fifth of an inch long, did not move away, provided though they were with vigorous legs; they remained higgledy-piggledy with the white skins of the eggs whence they had emerged.
In vain I placed within their reach lumps of earth containing nests of the Anthophora, open cells, larvæ and nymphs of the Bee: nothing was able to tempt them; they persisted in forming, with the egg-skins, a powdery heap of speckled black and white. It was only by drawing the point of a needle through this pinch of living dust that I was able to provoke an active wriggling. Apart from this, all was still. If I forcibly removed a few larvæ from the common heap, they at once hurried back to it, in order to hide themselves among the rest. Perhaps they had less reason to fear the cold when thus collected and sheltered beneath the egg-skins. Whatever may be the motive that impels them to remain thus gathered in a heap, I recognized that none of the means suggested by my imagination succeeded in forcing them to abandon the little spongy mass formed by the skins of the eggs, which were slightly glued together. Lastly, to assure myself that the larvæ, in the free state, do not disperse after they are hatched, I went during the winter to Carpentras and inspected the banks inhabited by the Anthophoræ. There, as in my boxes, I found the larvæ piled into heaps, all mixed up with the skins of the eggs.