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Certainly no foe will break in through the double rampart; but he will make an insidious attack from the rear. The Leucopsis will come and, with her long probe, thanks to some imperceptible fissure in the tube, will insert her dread eggs and destroy every single inhabitant of the fortress. Thus are the Manicate Anthidium's anxious precautions outwitted.
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.
Each time that the insect, on finishing the operation, removed its probe, I marked in pencil the exact point at which the instrument was withdrawn; and I wrote down the date beside it. This information was to be utilized when the Leucopsis finished her labours. When the perforators are gone, I proceed with my examination of the nests, covered with my hieroglyphics, the pencilled notes.
Yet, before I knew the habits of the Leucopsis, I would readily have believed that every Hymenopteron armed with a long probe inserts her eggs into the victim's sides, as the Ichneumon-flies do to the Caterpillars. I mention this for the benefit of any who may be under the same erroneous impression.
'Just so; nevertheless, our black-and-yellow friend is a parasite of the Chalicodoma of the Walls, who has nothing in common, either in shape or colour, with the Wasp. This is a Leucopsis, not one of whom enters the Wasps' nest. 'Then mimesis...? 'Mimesis is an illusion which we should do well to relegate to oblivion.
The Leucopsis is a Hymenopteron, the essay upon whom forms the concluding chapter of the present volume. For the moment, I merely mention the names of the three exterminators. The provisions are stolen, the egg is destroyed. The young grub dies of hunger, the larva is devoured. Is that all? Not yet. The worker must be exploited thoroughly, in her work as well as in her family.
Starting at the base, on the lower surface, it runs round the belly from front to back and then returns from back to front on the upper surface, where it ends at almost the same level as its starting-point. Its length is 14 millimetres. One last word on the Leucopsis' weapon.
If nevertheless the Leucopsis does not distinguish between these various cells and drives the probe into all of them indifferently, is this not an evident proof that smell is no guide whatever to her in her search? Other considerations, when I was treating of the Hairy Ammophila, enabled me to assert that the antennae have no olfactory powers.
The parasite has wiped out half the colony. To complete the disaster, it is not unusual for the grub-eaters, the Leucopsis and her rival, the pygmy Chalcis, to have decimated the other half. I say nothing of Anthrax sinuata, whom I sometimes see coming from the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds; her larva preys on the Three-horned Osmia, the Mason-bee's visitor.
I fall back upon a fissure, a lack of continuity somewhere, although my examination fails to discover any on the Mason-bee's nest. I was better served in another case. Leucopsis dorsigera, FAB., settles her eggs on the larva of the Diadem Anthidium, who sometimes makes her nest in reed-stumps. I have repeatedly seen her insert her auger through a slight rupture in the side of the reed.
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