To decide positively whether honey is or is not repugnant to the grubs of the Philanthus was hardly practicable by the method just explained.  The first meals consisted of flesh, and after that nothing in particular occurred.  The honey is encountered later, when the bee is largely consumed.  If hesitation and repugnance were manifested at this point they came too late to be conclusive; the sickness of the larvae might be due to other causes, known or unknown.  We must offer honey at the very beginning, before artificial rearing has spoilt the grub’s appetite.  To offer pure honey would, of course, be useless; no carnivorous creature would touch it, even were it starving.  I must spread the honey on meat; that is, I must smear the dead bee with honey, lightly varnishing it with a camel’s-hair brush.

Under these conditions the problem is solved with the first few mouthfuls.  The grub, having bitten on the honeyed bee, draws back as though disgusted; hesitates for a long time; then, urged by hunger, begins again; tries first on one side, then on another; in the end it refuses to touch the bee again.  For a few days it pines upon its rations, which are almost intact, then dies.  As many as are subjected to the same treatment perish in the same way.

Do they simply die of hunger in the presence of food which their appetites reject, or are they poisoned by the small amount of honey absorbed at the first bites?  I cannot say; but, whether poisonous or merely repugnant, the bee smeared with honey is always fatal to them; a fact which explains more clearly than the unfavourable circumstances of the former experiment my lack of success with the freshly killed bees.

This refusal to touch honey, whether poisonous or repugnant, is connected with principles of alimentation too general to be a gastronomic peculiarity of the Philanthus grub.  Other carnivorous larvae—­at least in the series of the Hymenoptera—­must share it.  Let us experiment.  The method need not be changed.  I exhume the larvae when in a state of medium growth, to avoid the vicissitudes of extreme youth; I collect the bodies of the grubs and insects which form their natural diet and smear each body with honey, in which condition I return them to the larvae.  A distinction is apparent:  all the larvae are not equally suited to my experiment.  Those larvae must be rejected which are nourished upon one single corpulent insect, as is that of the Scolia.  The grub attacks its prey at a determined point, plunges its head and neck into the body of the insect, skilfully divides the entrails in order to keep the remains fresh until its meal is ended, and does not emerge from the opening until all is consumed but the empty skin.