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It would seem that, towards the end, the act of consumption becomes more savage and does not disdain dead meat. I also notice that the Leucopsis is not able to get up from dinner or to sit down to it again as readily as the Anthrax.
Later, we find nothing in the Mason-bee's cocoon except the Leucopsis' larva, gloriously fat, and, by its side, a sort of thin, rancid rasher, the remains of the deceased wet-nurse. Things then remain as they are until the hot part of the following summer or at least until the end of June.
Most of them contain the Mason in the perfect state; others give me the larva of the Anthrax; others very numerous, these give me the larva of the Leucopsis. And this last is alone, always alone, invariably alone. The whole thing is utterly incomprehensible when one knows, as I know, how many times the probe entered those cells.
When she comes from the Chalicodoma of the Pebbles or Walls, whose opulent larva saturates her with food, she deserves by her large size the name of Leucopsis gigas, which Fabricius bestows upon her; when she comes from the Chalicodoma of the Sheds, she deserves no more than the name of L. grandis, which is all that Klug grants her.
Let us look at her from another point of view, whose full importance will not be apparent until the end; let us speak of something which I was very far from suspecting when I was so assiduously watching the nests of my Mason-bees. The same cell can receive the Leucopsis' probe a number of times, at intervals of several days.
In what respect do the Mutilla, the Chrysis, the Leucopsis, the Anthrax and so many others differ, in their way of living, from the Scolia? It seems to me, in none. See for yourselves.
My excursions, alas, did not all reward my zeal, which zeal was not without merit in the merciless sunshine; but still, at rare intervals, I succeeded in seeing some Leucopsis digging her probe into the mortar dome.
Another "little gelatinous speck," "a shadow of a creature," the larva of a Chalcidian, the Leucopsis, one of the parasites of the Mason-bee, knows that in the cell of the mason there is food for one only.
Notwithstanding the resistance of the substance traversed, the Leucopsis perseveres, certain of succeeding; and she does succeed, although I am still unable to understand her success. The material through which the probe has to penetrate is not a porous substance; it is homogeneous and compact, like our hardened cement.
Here is a cocoon of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles with an egg side by side with the Chalicodoma-grub. But what a curious egg! Never have my eyes beheld the like; and then is it really the egg of the Leucopsis? Great was my apprehension. But I breathed again when I found, a couple of weeks later, that the egg had become the larva with which I was familiar.
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