I went to work with every possible caution in breaking open the home; I cast the shadow of my body over the nest, to save the grub from sunstroke; I at once transferred larva and provisions into a glass tube and placed this tube in a box which I carried in my hand, to minimize the jolting on the journey.

Nothing was of avail: the larva, when taken from its dwelling, always allowed itself to pine away.
For a long time I persisted in explaining my want of success by the difficulties attending the removal.

Eumenes Amedei's cell is a strong casket which cannot be forced without sustaining a shock; and the demolition of a work of this kind entails such varied accidents that we are always liable to think that the worm has been bruised by the wreckage.

As for carrying home the nest intact on its support, with a view to opening it with greater care than is permitted by a rough-and-ready operation in the fields, that is out of the question: the nest nearly always stands on an immovable rock or on some big stone forming part of a wall.

If I failed in my attempts at rearing, it was because the larva had suffered when I was breaking up her house.