Not having taken the precaution to capture it, I do not know what name the entomologists have bestowed upon it, or even if this dwarf exterminator of the Cigale has as yet been catalogued.

What I am familiar with is its calm temerity, its impudent audacity in the presence of the colossus who could crush it with a foot.

I have seen as many as three at once exploiting the unfortunate female.

They keep close behind the Cigale, working busily with their probes, or waiting until their victim deposits her eggs.
The Cigale fills one of her egg-chambers and climbs a little higher in order to bore another hole.

One of the bandits runs to the abandoned station, and there, almost under the claws of the giant, and without the least nervousness, as if it were accomplishing some meritorious action, it unsheathes its probe and thrusts it into the column of eggs, not by the open aperture, which is bristling with broken fibres, but by a lateral fissure.