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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.
In one way or another, the same cell is exposed to manifold layings, though its contents, the Chalicodoma-grub, be only the bare ration of a single Leucopsis-grub. These reiterated borings are not at all rare: I noted a score of them on my tiles; and, in the case of some cells, the operation was repeated before my eyes as often as four times.
Then what is the purpose of the Leucopsis' invisible implements? His method of consuming will tell us. Like his prototype, the Anthrax, the Leucopsis does not eat the Chalicodoma-grub, that is to say, he does not break it up into mouthfuls; he drains it without opening it and digging into its vitals.
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