Note 9 — Chapter XX · FABRE’S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)

One of these Hymenoptera whose impeccable science we were admiring just now, a Languedocian Sphex, is busy closing the burrow in which she has laid her egg with its store of game. We brush her aside, and plunder her nest before her eyes. Directly the passage is free, she enters and remains for a few moments. Then she emerges and proceeds to stop up the cell, as though nothing were the matter, as though she had not found her burrow empty, as though the work of closing the cell had still a motive.9