What we are able to declare is that the torpor is not very deep, inasmuch as the patient sometimes retains enough vitality to shed its skin and become a chrysalid.

Everything thus tends to make us ask by what stratagem the egg is shielded from danger.
This stratagem I longed to discover; I would not be put off by the scarcity of nests, by the irksomeness of the searches, by the risk of sunstroke, by the time taken up, by the vain breaking open of unsuitable cells; I meant to see and I saw.

Here is my method: with the point of a knife and a pair of nippers, I make a side opening, a window, beneath the dome of Eumenes Amedei and Eumenes pomiformis.

I work with the greatest care, so as not to injure the recluse.

Formerly I attacked the cupola from the top, now I attack it from the side.