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More Hunting Wasps

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Title: More Hunting Wasps

Author: Jean-Henri Fabre

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos


        
Release date: October 1, 2002 [eBook #3462]
                Most recently updated: February 12, 2009

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3462

Credits: Produced by Sue Asscher, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORE HUNTING WASPS ***




Produced by Sue Asscher





MORE HUNTING WASPS

By J. Henri Fabre


Translated By Alexander Teixeira De Mattos, F. Z. S.




TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

The fourteen chapters contained in this volume complete the list of
essays in the "Souvenirs entomologiques" devoted to Wasps. The remainder
will be found in the two earlier volumes of this collected edition
entitled "The Hunting Wasps" and the "Mason-wasps" respectively.

Chapter 2 has appeared before in my version of "The Life and Love of
the Insect," an illustrated volume of extracts translated by myself and
published by Messrs. Adam and Charles Black (in America by the Macmillan
Co.), and Chapter 10 in a similar miscellany translated by Mr. Bernard
Miall published by Messrs. T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. (in America by the
Century Co.) under the title of "Social Life in the Insect World." These
two chapters are included in the present book by arrangement with the
original firms.

I wish to place on record my thanks to Mr. Miall for the valuable
assistance which he has given me in preparing this translation.

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.

Ventnor, I. W., 6 December, 1920.




CONTENTS.

     TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

     CHAPTER 1. THE POMPILI.

     CHAPTER 2. THE SCOLIAE.

     CHAPTER 3. A DANGEROUS DIET.

     CHAPTER 4. THE CETONIA-LARVA.

     CHAPTER 5. THE PROBLEM OF THE SCOLIAE.

     CHAPTER 6. THE TACHYTES.

     CHAPTER 7. CHANGE OF DIET.

     CHAPTER 8. A DIG AT THE EVOLUTIONISTS.

     CHAPTER 9. RATIONING ACCORDING TO SEX.

     CHAPTER 10. THE BEE-EATING PHILANTHUS.

     CHAPTER 11. THE METHOD OF THE AMMOPHILAE.

     CHAPTER 12. THE METHOD OF THE SCOLIAE.

     CHAPTER 13. THE METHOD OF THE CALICURGI.

     CHAPTER 14. OBJECTIONS AND REJOINDERS.

     INDEX.




CHAPTER 1. THE POMPILI.


(This essay should be read in conjunction with that on the Black-bellied
Tarantula. Cf. "The Life of the Spider," by J. Henri Fabre, translated
by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 1.--Translator's Note.)


The Ammophila's caterpillar (Cf. "The Hunting Wasps," by J. Henri Fabre,
translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 13 and 18 to 20;
and Chapter 11 of the present volume.--Translator's Note.), the Bembex
(Cf. idem: chapter 14.--Translator's Note.), Gad-fly, the Cerceris (Cf.
idem: chapters 1 to 3.--Translator's Note.), Buprestis (A Beetle
usually remarkable for her brilliant colouring. Cf. idem: chapter
1.--Translator's Note.) and Weevil, the Sphex (Cf. idem: chapter 4 to
10.--Translator's Note.), Locust, Cricket and Ephippiger (Cf. "The Life
of the Grasshopper," by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander
Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 13 and 14.--Translator's Note.): all
these inoffensive peaceable victims are like the silly Sheep of our
slaughter-houses; they allow themselves to be operated upon by the
paralyser, submitting stupidly, without offering much resistance. The
mandibles gape, the legs kick and protest, the body wriggles and twists;
and that is all. They have no weapons capable of contending with the
assassin's dagger. I should like to see the huntress grappling with
an imposing adversary, one as crafty as herself, an expert layer of
ambushes and, like her, bearing a poisoned dirk. I should like to see
the bandit armed with her stiletto confronted by another bandit equally
familiar with the use of that weapon. Is such a duel possible? Yes, it
is quite possible and even quite common. On the one hand we have the
Pompili, the protagonists who are always victorious; on the other hand
we have the Spiders, the protagonists who are always overthrown.

Who that has diverted himself, however little, with the study of insects
does not know the Pompili? Against old walls, at the foot of the banks
beside unfrequented footpaths, in the stubble after the harvest, in the
tangles of dry grass, wherever the Spider spreads her nets, who has not
seen them busily at work, now running hither and thither, at random,
their wings raised and quivering above their backs, now moving from
place to place in flights long or short? They are hunting for a quarry
which might easily turn the tables and itself prey upon the trapper
lying in wait for it.

The Pompili feed their larvae solely on Spiders; and the Spiders feed on
any insect, commensurate with their size, that is caught in their nets.
While the first possess a sting, the second have two poisoned fangs.
Often their strength is equally matched; indeed the advantage is
not seldom on the Spider's side. The Wasp has her ruses of war, her
cunningly premeditated strokes: the Spider has her wiles and her set
traps; the first has the advantage of great rapidity of movement, while
the second is able to rely upon her perfidious web; the one has a sting
which contrives to penetrate the exact point to cause paralysis, the
other has fangs which bite the back of the neck and deal sudden death.
We find the paralyser on the one hand and the slaughterer on the other.
Which of the two will become the other's prey?

If we consider only the relative strength of the adversaries, the power
of their weapons, the virulence of their poisons and their different
modes of action, the scale would very often be weighted in favour of the
Spider. Since the Pompilus always emerges victorious from this contest,
which appears to be full of peril for her, she must have a special
method, of which I would fain learn the secret.

In our part of the country, the most powerful and courageous
Spider-huntress is the Ringed Pompilus (Calicurgus annulatus, FAB.),
clad in black and yellow. She stands high on her legs; and her wings
have black tips, the rest being yellow, as though exposed to smoke, like
a bloater. Her size is about that of the Hornet (Vespa crabro). She is
rare. I see three or four of her in the course of the year; and I never
fail to halt in the presence of the proud insect, rapidly striding
through the dust of the fields when the dog-days arrive. Its audacious
air, its uncouth gait, its war-like bearing long made me suspect that
to obtain its prey it had to make some impossible, terrible, unspeakable
capture. And my guess was correct. By dint of waiting and watching
I beheld that victim; I saw it in the huntress' mandibles. It is the
Black-bellied Tarantula, the terrible Spider who slays a Carpenter-bee
or a Bumble-bee outright with one stroke of her weapon; the Spider who
kills a Sparrow or a Mole; the formidable creature whose bite would
perhaps not be without danger to ourselves. Yes, this is the bill of
fare which the proud Pompilus provides for her larva.

This spectacle, one of the most striking with which the Hunting Wasps
have ever provided me, has as yet been offered to my eyes but once; and
that was close beside my rural home, in the famous laboratory of the
harmas. (The enclosed piece of waste land on which the author studied
his insects in their native state. Cf. "The Life of the Fly," by
J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter
1.--Translator's Note.) I can still see the intrepid poacher dragging by
the leg, at the foot of a wall, the monstrous prize which she had just
secured, doubtless at no great distance. At the base of the wall was a
hole, an accidental chink between some of the stones. The Wasp inspected
the cavern, not for the first time: she had already reconnoitred it
and the premises had satisfied her. The prey, deprived of the power of
movement, was waiting somewhere, I know not where; and the huntress had
gone back to fetch it and store it away. It was at this moment that
I met her. The Pompilus gave a last glance at the cave, removed a few
small fragments of loose mortar; and with that her preparations were
completed. The Lycosa (The Spider in question is known indifferently
as the Black-bellied Tarantula and the Narbonne Lycosa.--Translator's
Note.) was introduced, dragged along, belly upwards, by one leg. I
did not interfere. Presently the Wasp reappeared on the surface and
carelessly pushed in front of the hole the bits of mortar which she had
just extracted from it. Then she flew away. It was all over. The egg was
laid; the insect had finished for better or for worse; and I was able to
proceed with my examination of the burrow and its contents.

The Pompilus has done no digging. It is really an accidental hole with
spacious winding passages, the result of the mason's negligence and not
of the Wasp's industry. The closing of the cavity is quite as rough and
summary. A few crumbs of mortar, heaped up before the doorway, form a
barricade rather than a door. A mighty hunter makes a poor architect.
The Tarantula's murderess does not know how to dig a cell for her larva;
she does not know how to fill up the entrance by sweeping dust into it.
The first hole encountered at the foot of a wall contents her, provided
that it be roomy enough; a little heap of rubbish will do for a door.
Nothing could be more expeditious.

I withdraw the game from the hole. The egg is stuck to the Spider, near
the beginning of the belly. A clumsy movement on my part makes it fall
off at the moment of extraction. It is all over: the thing will not
hatch; I shall not be able to observe the development of the larva. The
Tarantula lies motionless, flexible as in life, with not a trace of a
wound. In short, we have here life without movement. From time to time
the tips of the tarsi quiver a little; and that is all. Accustomed of
old to these deceptive corpses, I can see in my mind's eye what has
happened: the Spider has been stung in the region of the thorax, no
doubt once only, in view of the concentration of her nervous system. I
place the victim in a box in which it retains all the pliancy and all
the freshness of life from the 2nd of August to the 20th of September,
that is to say, for seven weeks. These miracles are familiar to us (Cf.
"The Hunting Wasps": passim.--Translator's Note.); there is no need to
linger over them here.

The most important matter has escaped me. What I wanted, what I still
want to see is the Pompilus engaged in mortal combat with the Lycosa.
What a duel, in which the cunning of the one has to overcome the
terrible weapons of the other! Does the Wasp enter the burrow to
surprise the Tarantula at the bottom of her lair? Such temerity would
be fatal to her. Where the big Bumble-bee dies an instant death, the
audacious visitor would perish the moment she entered. Is not the other
there, facing her, ready to snap at the back of her head, inflicting
a wound which would result in sudden death? No, the Pompilus does not
enter the Spider's parlour, that is obvious. Does she surprise the
Spider outside her fortress? But the Lycosa is a stay-at-home animal; I
do not see her straying abroad during the summer. Later, in the autumn,
when the Pompili have disappeared, She wanders about; turning gipsy, she
takes the open air with her numerous family, which she carries on her
back. Apart from these maternal strolls, she does not appear to me to
leave her castle; and the Pompilus, I should think, has no great
chance of meeting her outside. The problem, we perceive, is becoming
complicated: the huntress cannot make her way into the burrow, where
she would risk sudden death; and the Spider's sedentary habits make an
encounter outside the burrow improbable. Here is a riddle which would
be interesting to decipher. Let us endeavour to do so by observing other
Spider-hunters; analogy will enable us to draw a conclusion.

I have often watched Pompili of every species on their
hunting-expeditions, but I have never surprised them entering the
Spider's lodging when the latter was at home. Whether this lodging be a
funnel plunging its neck into a hole in some wall, an awning stretched
amid the stubble, a tent modelled upon the Arab's, a sheath formed of a
few leaves bound together, or a net with a guard-room attached, whenever
the owner is indoors the suspicious Pompilus holds aloof. When the
dwelling is vacant, it is another matter: the Wasp moves with arrogant
ease over those webs, springes and cables in which so many other insects
would remain ensnared. The silken threads do not seem to have any hold
upon her. What is she doing, exploring those empty webs? She is watching
to see what is happening on the adjacent webs where the Spider is
ambushed. The Pompilus therefore feels an insuperable reluctance to make
straight for the Spider when the latter is at home in the midst of
her snares. And she is right, a hundred times over. If the Tarantula
understands the practice of the dagger-thrust in the neck, which is
immediately fatal, the other cannot be unacquainted with it. Woe then to
the imprudent Wasp who presents herself upon the threshold of a Spider
of approximately equal strength!

Of the various instances which I have collected of this cautious reserve
on the Spider-huntress' part I will confine myself to the following,
which will be sufficient to prove my point. By joining, with silken
strands, the three folioles which form the leaf of Virgil's cytisus, a
Spider has built herself a green arbour, a horizontal sheath, open at
either end. A questing Pompilus comes upon the scene, finds the game to
her liking and pops in her head at the entrance of the cell. The Spider
immediately retreats to the other end. The huntress goes round the
Spider's dwelling and reappears at the other door. Again the Spider
retreats, returning to the first entrance. The Wasp also returns to it,
but always by the outside. Scarcely has she done so, when the Spider
rushes for the opposite opening; and so on for fully a quarter of an
hour, both of them coming and going from one end of the cylinder to the
other, the Spider inside and the Pompilus outside.

The quarry was a valuable one, it seems, since the Wasp persisted for a
long time in her attempts, which were invariably defeated; however, the
huntress had to abandon them, baffled by this perpetual running to and
fro. The Pompilus made off; and the Spider, once more on the watch,
patiently awaited the heedless Midges. What should the Wasp have done
to capture this much-coveted game? She should have entered the verdant
cylinder, the Spider's dwelling, and pursued the Spider direct, in her
own house, instead of remaining outside, going from one door to the
other. With such swiftness and dexterity as hers, it seemed to me
impossible that the stroke should fail: the quarry moved clumsily, a
little sideways, like a Crab. I judged it to be an easy matter; the
Pompilus thought it highly dangerous. To-day I am of her opinion: if
she had entered the leafy tube, the mistress of the house would have
operated on her neck and the huntress would have become the quarry.

Years passed and the paralyser of the Spiders still refused to reveal
her secret; I was badly served by circumstances, could find no leisure,
was absorbed in unrelenting preoccupations. At length, during my last
year at Orange, the light dawned upon me. My garden was enclosed by an
old wall, blackened and ruined by time, where, in the chinks between the
stones, lived a population of Spiders, represented more particularly by
Segestria perfidia. This is the common Black Spider, or Cellar Spider.
She is deep black all over, excepting the mandibles, which are a
splendid metallic green. Her two poisoned daggers look like a product of
the metal-worker's art, like the finest bronze. In any mass of abandoned
masonry there is not a quiet corner, not a hole the size of one's
finger, in which the Segestria does not set up house. Her web is a
widely flaring funnel, whose open end, at most a span across, lies
spread upon the surface of the wall, where it is held in place by
radiating threads. This conical surface is continued by a tube which
runs into a hole in the wall. At the end is the dining-room to which the
Spider retires to devour at her ease her captured prey.

With her two hind-legs stuck into the tube to obtain a purchase and the
six others spread around the orifice, the better to perceive on every
side the quiver which gives the signal of a capture, the Segestria
waits motionless, at the entrance of her funnel, for an insect to become
entangled in the snare. Large Flies, Drone-flies, dizzily grazing some
thread of the snare with their wings, are her usual victims. At the
first flutter of the netted Fly, the Spider runs or even leaps forward,
but she is now secured by a cord which escapes from the spinnerets and
which has its end fastened to the silken tube. This prevents her from
falling as she darts along a vertical surface. Bitten at the back of the
head, the Drone-fly is dead in a moment; and the Segestria carries him
into her lair.

Thanks to this method and these hunting-appliances--an ambush at the
bottom of a silken whirlpool, radiating snares, a life-line which holds
her from behind and allows her to take a sudden rush without risking
a fall--the Segestria is able to catch game less inoffensive than the
Drone-fly. A Common Wasp, they tell me, does not daunt her. Though I
have not tested this, I readily believe it, for I well know the Spider's
boldness.

This boldness is reinforced by the activity of the venom. It is enough
to have seen the Segestria capture some large Fly to be convinced of the
overwhelming effect of her fangs upon the insects bitten in the
neck. The death of the Drone-fly, entangled in the silken funnel,
is reproduced by the sudden death of the Bumble-bee on entering the
Tarantula's burrow. We know the effect of the poison on man, thanks
to Antoine Duges' investigations. (Antoine Louis Duges (1797-1838), a
French physician and physiologist, author of a "Traite de
physiologie comparee de l'homme et des animaux" and other scientific
works.--Translator's Note.) Let us listen to the brave experimenter:

"The treacherous Segestria, or Great Cellar Spider, reputed poisonous
in our part of the country, was chosen for the principal subject of our
experiments. She was three-quarters of an inch long, measured from the
mandibles to the spinnerets. Taking her in my fingers from behind, by
the legs, which were folded and gathered together (this is the way to
catch hold of live Spiders, if you would avoid their bite and master
them without mutilating them), I placed her on various objects and on
my clothes, without her manifesting the least desire to do any harm; but
hardly was she laid on the bare skin of my fore-arm when she seized a
fold of the epidermis in her powerful mandibles, which are of a metallic
green, and drove her fangs deep into it. For a few moments she remained
hanging, although left free; then she released herself, fell and fled,
leaving two tiny wounds, a sixth of an inch apart, red, but hardly
bleeding, with a slight extravasation round the edge and resembling the
wounds produced by a large pin.

"At the moment of the bite, the sensation was sharp enough to deserve
the name of pain; and this continued for five or six minutes more, but
not so forcibly. I might compare it with the sensation produced by the
stinging-nettle. A whitish tumefaction almost immediately surrounded the
two pricks; and the circumference, within a radius of about an inch, was
coloured an erysipelas red, accompanied by a very slight swelling. In an
hour and a half, it had all disappeared, except the mark of the pricks,
which persisted for several days, as any other small wound would
have done. This was in September, in rather cool weather. Perhaps the
symptoms would have displayed somewhat greater severity at a warmer
season."

Without being serious, the effect of the Segestria's poison is plainly
marked. A sting causing sharp pain and swelling, with the redness of
erysipelas, is no trifling matter. While Duges' experiment reassures us
in so far as we ourselves are concerned, it is none the less the fact
that the Cellar Spider's poison is a terrible thing for insects, whether
because of the small size of the victim, or because it acts with special
efficacy upon an organization which differs widely from our own. One
Pompilus, though greatly inferior to the Segestria in size and
strength, nevertheless makes war upon the Black Spider and succeeds in
overpowering this formidable quarry. This is Pompilus apicalis, VAN DER
LIND, who is hardly larger than the Hive-bee, but very much slenderer.
She is of a uniform black; her wings are a cloudy brown, with
transparent tips. Let us follow her in her expeditions to the old wall
inhabited by the Segestria: we will track her for whole afternoons
during the July heats; and we will arm ourselves with patience, for the
perilous capture of the game must take the Wasp a long time.

The Spider-huntress explores the wall minutely; she runs, leaps and
flies; she comes and goes, flitting to and fro. The antennae quiver; the
wings, raised above the back, continually beat one against the other.
Ah, here she is, close to a Segestria's funnel! The Spider, who has
hitherto remained invisible, instantly appears at the entrance to
the tube; she spreads her six fore-legs outside, ready to receive the
huntress. Far from fleeing before the terrible apparition, she watches
the watcher, fully prepared to prey upon her enemy. Before this intrepid
demeanour the Pompilus draws back. She examines the coveted game, walks
round it for a moment, then goes away without attempting anything. When
she has gone, the Segestria retires indoors, backwards. For the second
time the Wasp passes near an inhabited funnel. The Spider on the lookout
at once shows herself on the threshold of her dwelling, half out of her
tube, ready for defence and perhaps also for attack. The Pompilus moves
away and the Segestria reenters her tube. A fresh alarm: the Pompilus
returns; another threatening demonstration on the part of the Spider.
Her neighbour, a little later, does better than this: while the huntress
is prowling about in the neighbourhood of the funnel, she suddenly leaps
out of the tube, with the lifeline which will save her from falling,
should she miss her footing, attached to her spinnerets; she rushes
forward and hurls herself in front of the Pompilus, at a distance
of some eight inches from her burrow. The Wasp, as though terrified,
immediately decamps; and the Segestria no less suddenly retreats
indoors.

Here, we must admit, is a strange quarry: it does not hide, but is eager
to show itself; it does not run away, but flings itself in front of the
hunter. If our observations were to cease here, could we say which of
the two is the hunter and which the hunted? Should we not feel sorry for
the imprudent Pompilus? Let a thread of the trap entangle her leg; and
it is all up with her. The other will be there, stabbing her in the
throat. What then is the method which she employs against the Segestria,
always on the alert, ready for defence, audacious to the point of
aggression? Shall I surprise the reader if I tell him that this problem
filled me with the most eager interest, that it held me for weeks in
contemplation before that cheerless wall? Nevertheless, my tale will be
a short one.

On several occasions I see the Pompilus suddenly fling herself on one of
the Spider's legs, seize it with her mandibles and endeavour to draw the
animal from its tube. It is a sudden rush, a surprise attack, too
quick to permit the Spider to parry it. Fortunately, the latter's two
hind-legs are firmly hooked to the dwelling; and the Segestria escapes
with a jerk, for the other, having delivered her shock attack, hastens
to release her hold; if she persisted, the affair might end badly for
her. Having failed in this assault, the Wasp repeats the procedure
at other funnels; she will even return to the first when the alarm is
somewhat assuaged. Still hopping and fluttering, she prowls around the
mouth, whence the Segestria watches her, with her legs outspread. She
waits for the propitious moment; she leaps forward, seizes a leg, tugs
at it and springs out of reach. More often than not, the Spider holds
fast; sometimes she is dragged out of the tube, to a distance of a few
inches, but immediately returns, no doubt with the aid of her unbroken
lifeline.

The Pompilus' intention is plain: she wants to eject the Spider from her
fortress and fling her some distance away. So much perseverance leads to
success. This time all goes well: with a vigorous and well-timed tug
the Wasp has pulled the Segestria out and at once lets her drop to
the ground. Bewildered by her fall and even more demoralized by being
wrested from her ambush, the Spider is no longer the bold adversary that
she was. She draws her legs together and cowers into a depression in
the soil. The huntress is there on the instant to operate on the evicted
animal. I have barely time to draw near to watch the tragedy when the
victim is paralysed by a thrust of the sting in the thorax.

Here at last, in all its Machiavellian cunning, is the shrewd method
of the Pompilus. She would be risking her life if she attacked the
Segestria in her home; the Wasp is so convinced of it that she takes
good care not to commit this imprudence; but she knows also that, once
dislodged from her dwelling, the Spider is as timid, as cowardly as she
was bold at the centre of her funnel. The whole point of her tactics,
therefore, lies in dislodging the creature. This done, the rest is
nothing.

The Tarantula-huntress must behave in the same manner. Enlightened
by her kinswoman, Pompilus apicalis, my mind pictures her wandering
stealthily around the Lycosa's rampart. The Lycosa hurries up from
the bottom of her burrow, believing that a victim is approaching; she
ascends her vertical tube, spreading her fore-legs outside, ready to
leap. But it is the Ringed Pompilus who leaps, seizes a leg, tugs and
hurls the Lycosa from her burrow. The Spider is henceforth a craven
victim, who will let herself be stabbed without dreaming of employing
her venomous fangs. Here craft triumphs over strength; and this craft is
not inferior to mine, when, wishing to capture the Tarantula, I make her
bite a spike of grass which I dip into the burrow, lead her gently
to the surface and then with a sudden jerk throw her outside. For the
entomologist as for the Pompilus, the essential thing is to make the
Spider leave her stronghold. After this there is no difficulty in
catching her, thanks to the utter bewilderment of the evicted animal.

Two contrasting points impress me in the facts which I have just set
forth: the shrewdness of the Pompilus and the folly of the Spider. I
will admit that the Wasp may gradually have acquired, as being highly
beneficial to her posterity, the instinct by which she first of all so
judiciously drags the victim from its refuge, in order there to paralyse
it without incurring danger, provided that you will explain why the
Segestria, possessing an intellect no less gifted than that of the
Pompilus, does not yet know how to counteract the trick of which she
has so long been the victim. What would the Black Spider need to do to
escape her exterminator? Practically nothing: it would be enough for her
to withdraw into her tube, instead of coming up to post herself at the
entrance, like a sentry, whenever the enemy is in the neighbourhood. It
is very brave of her, I agree, but also very risky. The Pompilus will
pounce upon one of the legs spread outside the burrow for defence
and attack; and the besieged Spider will perish, betrayed by her own
boldness. This posture is excellent when waiting for prey. But the Wasp
is not a quarry; she is an enemy and one of the most dreaded of enemies.
The Spider knows this. At the sight of the Wasp, instead of placing
herself fearlessly but foolishly on her threshold, why does she not
retreat into her fortress, where the other would not attack her? The
accumulated experience of generations should have taught her this
elementary tactical device, which is of the greatest value to the
prosperity of her race. If the Pompilus has perfected her method of
attack, why has not the Segestria perfected her method of defence? Is it
possible that centuries upon centuries should have modified the one
to its advantage without succeeding in modifying the other? Here I am
utterly at a loss. And I say to myself, in all simplicity: since the
Pompili must have Spiders, the former have possessed their patient
cunning and the other their foolish audacity from all time. This may
be puerile, if you like to think it so, and not in keeping with the
transcendental aims of our fashionable theorists; the argument contains
neither the subjective nor the objective point of view, neither
adaptation nor differentiation, neither atavism nor evolutionism. Very
well, but at least I understand it.

Let us return to the habits of Pompilus apicalis. Without expecting
results of any particular interest, for in captivity the respective
talents of the huntress and the quarry seem to slumber, I place
together, in a wide jar, a Wasp and a Segestria. The Spider and her
enemy mutually avoid each other, both being equally timid. A judicious
shake or two brings them into contact. The Segestria, from time to time,
catches hold of the Pompilus, who gathers herself up as best she can,
without attempting to use her sting; the Spider rolls the insect between
her legs and even between her mandibles, but appears to dislike doing
it. Once I see her lie on her back and hold the Pompilus above her,
as far away as possible, while turning her over in her fore-legs
and munching at her with her mandibles. The Wasp, whether by her own
adroitness or owing to the Spider's dread of her, promptly escapes
from the terrible fangs, moves to a short distance and does not seem to
trouble unduly about the buffeting which she has received. She quietly
polishes her wings and curls her antennae by pulling them while standing
on them with her fore-tarsi. The attack of the Segestria, stimulated by
my shakes, is repeated ten times over; and the Pompilus always escapes
from the venomous fangs unscathed, as though she were invulnerable.

Is she really invulnerable? By no means, as we shall soon have proved to
us; if she retires safe and sound, it is because the Spider does not use
her fangs. What we see is a sort of truce, a tacit convention forbidding
deadly strokes, or rather the demoralization due to captivity; and the
two adversaries are no longer in a sufficiently warlike mood to make
play with their daggers. The tranquillity of the Pompilus, who keeps on
jauntily curling her antennae in face of the Segestria, reassures me
as to my prisoner's fate; for greater security, however, I throw her a
scrap of paper, in the folds of which she will find a refuge during
the night. She instals herself there, out of the Spider's reach. Next
morning I find her dead. During the night the Segestria, whose habits
are nocturnal, has recovered her daring and stabbed her enemy. I had
my suspicions that the parts played might be reversed! The butcher of
yesterday is the victim of to-day.

I replace the Pompilus by a Hive-bee. The interview is not protracted.
Two hours later, the Bee is dead, bitten by the Spider. A Drone-fly
suffers the same fate. The Segestria, however, does not touch either of
the two corpses, any more than she touched the corpse of the Pompilus.
In these murders the captive seems to have no other object than to rid
herself of a turbulent neighbour. When appetite awakes, perhaps the
victims will be turned to account. They were not; and the fault was
mine. I placed in the jar a Bumble-bee of average size. A day later the
Spider was dead; the rude sharer of her captivity had done the deed.

Let us say no more of these unequal duels in the glass prison and
complete the story of the Pompilus whom we left at the foot of the wall
with the paralysed Segestria. She abandons her prey on the ground and
returns to the wall. She visits the Spider's funnels one by one, walking
on them as freely as on the stones; she inspects the silken tubes,
dipping her antennae into them, sounding and exploring them; she enters
without the least hesitation. Whence does she now derive the temerity
thus to enter the Segestria's haunts? But a little while ago, she
was displaying extreme caution; at this moment, she seems heedless
of danger. The fact is that there is no danger really. The Wasp is
inspecting uninhabited houses. When she dives down a silken tunnel, she
very well knows that there is no one in, for, had the Segestria been
there, she would by this time have appeared on the threshold. The fact
that the householder does not show herself at the first vibration of the
neighbouring threads is a certain proof that the tube is vacant; and the
Pompilus enters in full security. I would recommend future observers not
to take the present investigations for hunting-tactics. I have already
remarked and I repeat: the Pompilus never enters the silken ambush while
the Spider is there.

Among the funnels inspected one appears to suit her better than
the others; she returns to it frequently in the course of her
investigations, which last for nearly an hour. From time to time she
hastens back to the Spider lying on the ground; she examines her, tugs
at her, drags her a little closer to the wall, then leaves her the
better to reconnoitre the tunnel which is the object of her preference.
Lastly she returns to the Segestria and takes her by the tip of the
abdomen. The quarry is so heavy that she has great difficulty in moving
it along the level ground. Two inches divide it from the wall. She gets
to the wall, not without effort; nevertheless, once the wall is reached,
the job is quickly done. We learn that Antaeus, the son of Mother Earth,
in his struggle with Hercules, received new strength as often as his
feet touched the ground; the Pompilus, the daughter of the wall, seems
to increase her powers tenfold once she has set foot on the masonry.

For here is the Wasp hoisting her prey backwards, her enormous prey,
which dangles beneath her. She climbs now a vertical plane, now a slope,
according to the uneven surface of the stones. She crosses gaps where
she has to go belly uppermost, while the quarry swings to and fro in the
air. Nothing stops her; she keeps on climbing, to a height of six feet
or more, without selecting her path, without seeing her goal, since she
goes backwards. A lodge appears no doubt reconnoitred beforehand and
reached, despite the difficulties of an ascent which did not allow her
to see it. The Pompilus lays her prey on it. The silken tube which she
inspected so lovingly is only some eight inches distant. She goes to it,
examines it rapidly and returns to the Spider, whom she at length lowers
down the tube.

Shortly afterwards I see her come out again. She searches here and
there on the wall for a few scraps of mortar, two or three fairly large
pieces, which she carries to the tube, to close it up. The task is done.
She flies away.

Next day I inspect this strange burrow. The Spider is at the bottom of
the silken tube, isolated on every side, as though in a hammock. The
Wasp's egg is glued not to the ventral surface of the victim but to the
back, about the middle, near the beginning of the abdomen. It is white,
cylindrical and about a twelfth of an inch long. The few bits of mortar
which I saw carried have but very roughly blocked the silken chamber at
the end. Thus Pompilus apicalis lays her quarry and her eggs not in a
burrow of her own making, but in the Spider's actual house. Perhaps the
silken tube belongs to this very victim, which in that event provides
both board and lodging. What a shelter for the larva of this Pompilus:
the warm retreat and downy hammock of the Segestria!

Here then, already, we have two Spider-huntresses, the Ringed Pompilus
and P. apicalis, who, unversed in the miner's craft, establish their
offspring inexpensively in accidental chinks in the walls, or even in
the lair of the Spider on whom the larva feeds. In these cells, acquired
without exertion, they build only an attempt at a wall with a few
fragments of mortar. But we must beware of generalizing about this
expeditious method of establishment. Other Pompili are true diggers,
valiantly sinking a burrow in the soil, to a depth of a couple of
inches. These include the Eight-spotted Pompilus (P. octopunctatus,
PANZ.), with her black-and-yellow livery and her amber wings, a little
darker at the tips. For her game she chooses the Epeirae (E. fasciata,
E. sericea) (For the Garden-spiders known as the Banded Epeira and
the Silky Epeira cf. "The Life of the Spider": chapters 11, 13, 14 et
passim.--Translator's Note.), those fat Spiders, magnificently adorned,
who lie in wait at the centre of their large, vertical webs. I am not
sufficiently acquainted with her habits to describe them; above all, I
know nothing of her hunting-tactics. But her dwelling is familiar to
me: it is a burrow, which I have seen her begin, complete and close
according to the customary method of the Digger-wasps.



CHAPTER 2. THE SCOLIAE.

Were strength to take precedence over the other zoological attributes,
the Scoliae would hold a predominant place in the front rank of the
Wasps. Some of them may be compared in size with the little bird from
the north, the Golden-crested Wren, who comes to us at the time of the
first autumn mists and visits the rotten buds. The largest and most
imposing of our sting-bearers, the Carpenter-bee, the Bumble-bee, the
Hornet, cut a poor figure beside certain of the Scoliae. Of this group
of giants my district possesses the Garden Scolia (S. hortorum, VAN DER
LIND), who is over an inch and a half in length and measures four inches
from tip to tip of her outspread wings, and the Hemorrhoidal Scolia (S.
haemorrhoidalis, VAN DER LIND), who rivals the Garden Scolia in point of
size and is distinguished more particularly by the bundle of red hairs
bristling at the tip of the abdomen.

A black livery, with broad yellow patches; leathery wings,
amber-coloured, like the skin of an onion, and watered with purple
reflections; thick, knotted legs, covered with sharp hairs; a massive
frame; a powerful head, encased in a hard cranium; a stiff, clumsy gait;
a low, short, silent flight: this gives you a concise description of the
female, who is strongly equipped for her arduous task. The male, being a
mere philanderer, sports a more elegant pair of horns, is more daintily
clad and has a more graceful figure, without altogether losing the
quality of robustness which is his consort's leading characteristic.

It is not without a certain alarm that the insect-collector finds
himself for the first time confronted by the Garden Scolia. How is he to
capture the imposing creature, how to avoid its sting? If its effect
is in proportion to the Wasp's size, the sting of the Scolia must be
something terrible. The Hornet, though she unsheath her weapon but
once, causes the most exquisite pain. What would it be like if one were
stabbed by this colossus? The prospect of a swelling as big as a man's
fist and as painful as the touch of a red-hot iron passes through our
mind at the moment when we are bringing down the net. And we refrain,
we beat a retreat, we are greatly relieved not to have aroused the
dangerous creature's attention.

Yes, I confess to having run away from my first Scoliae, anxious though
I was to enrich my budding collection with this magnificent insect.
There were painful recollections of the Common Wasp and the Hornet
connected with this excess of prudence. I say excess, for to-day,
instructed by long experience, I have quite recovered from my former
fears; and, when I see a Scolia resting on a thistle-head, I do not
scruple to take her in my fingers, without any precaution whatever,
however large she may be and however menacing her aspect. My courage is
not all that it seems to be; I am quite ready to tell the Wasp-hunting
novice this. The Scoliae are notably peaceable. Their sting is an
implement of labour far more than a weapon of war; they use it to
paralyse the prey destined for their offspring; and only in the last
extremity do they employ it in self-defence. Moreover, the lack of
agility in their movements nearly always enables us to avoid their
sting; and, even if we be stung, the pain is almost insignificant.
This absence of any acute smarting as a result of the poison is almost
constant in the Hunting Wasps, whose weapon is a surgical lancet and
devised for the most delicate physiological operations.

Among the other Scoliae of my district I will mention the Two-banded
Scolia (S. bifasciata, VAN DER LIND), whom I see every year, in
September, working at the heaps of leaf-mould which are placed for
her benefit in a corner of my paddock; and the Interrupted Scolia (S.
interrupta, LATR.), the inhabitant of the sandy soil at the foot of the
neighbouring hills. Much smaller than the two preceding insects, but
also much commoner, a necessary condition of continuous observation,
they will provide me with the principal data for this study of the
Scoliae.

I open my old note book; and I see myself once more, on the 6th of
August, 1857, in the Bois des Issards, that famous copse near Avignon
which I have celebrated in my essay on the Bembex-wasps. (Cf. "The
Hunting Wasps": chapter 14.--Translator's Note.) Once again, my head
crammed with entomological projects, I am at the beginning of my
holidays which, for two months, will allow me to indulge in the insect's
company.

A fig for Mariotte's flask and Toricelli's tube! (Edme Mariotte
(1620-1684), a French chemist who discovered, independently of Robert
Boyle the Irishman (1627-1691), the law generally known as Boyle's law,
which states that the product of the volume and the temperature of a gas
is constant at constant temperature. His flask is an apparatus contrived
to illustrate atmospheric pressure and ensure a constant flow of
liquid.--Translator's Note.) (Evangelista Toricelli (1608-1647), a
disciple of Galileo and professor of philosophy and mathematics at
Florence. His "tube" is our mercury barometer. He was the first to
obtain a vacuum by means of mercury; and he also improved the microscope
and the telescope.--Translator's Note.) This is the thrice-blest period
when I cease to be a schoolmaster and become a schoolboy, the schoolboy
in love with animals. Like a madder-cutter off for his day's work, I
set out carrying over my shoulder a solid digging-implement, the local
luchet, and on my back my game-bag with boxes, bottles, trowel, glass
tubes, tweezers, lenses and other impedimenta. A large umbrella saves me
from sunstroke. It is the most scorching hour of the hottest day in the
year. Exhausted by the heat, the Cicadae are silent. The bronze-eyed
Gad-flies seek a refuge from the pitiless sun under the roof of my
silken shelter; other large Flies, the sobre-hued Pangoniae, dash
themselves recklessly against my face.

The spot at which I have installed myself is a sandy clearing which I
had recognized the year before as a site beloved of the Scoliae. Here
and there are scattered thickets of holm-oak, whose dense undergrowth
shelters a bed of dead leaves and a thin layer of mould. My memory has
served me well. Here, sure enough, as the heat grows a little less,
appear, coming I know not from whence, some Two-banded Scoliae. The
number increases; and it is not long before I see very nearly a dozen of
them about me, close enough for observation. By their smaller size and
more buoyant flight, they are easily known for males. Almost grazing
the ground, they fly softly, going to and fro, passing and repassing in
every direction. From time to time one of them alights on the ground,
feels the sand with his antennae and seems to be enquiring into what
is happening in the depths of the soil; then he resumes his flight,
alternately coming and going.

What are they waiting for? What are they seeking in these evolutions
of theirs, which are repeated a hundred times over? Food? No, for close
beside them stand several eryngo-stems, whose sturdy clusters are the
Wasps' usual resource at this season of parched vegetation; and not one
of them settles upon the flowers, not one of them seems to care about
their sugary exudations. Their attention is engrossed elsewhere. It
is the ground, it is the stretch of sand which they are so assiduously
exploring; what they are waiting for is the arrival of some female, who
bursting the cocoon, may appear from one moment to the next, issuing all
dusty from the ground. She will not be given time to brush herself or to
wash her eyes: three or four more of them will be there at once, eager
to dispute her possession. I am too familiar with the amorous contests
of the Hymenopteron clan to allow myself to be mistaken. It is the rule
for the males, who are the earlier of the two, to keep a close guard
around the natal spot and watch for the emergence of the females, whom
they pester with their pursuit the moment they reach the light of day.
This is the motive of the interminable ballet of my Scoliae. Let us have
patience: perhaps we shall witness the nuptials.

The hours go by; the Pangoniae and the Gad-flies desert my umbrella; the
Scoliae grow weary and gradually disappear. It is finished. I shall see
nothing more to-day. I repeat my laborious expedition to the Bois des
Issards over and over again; and each time I see the males as assiduous
as ever in skimming over the ground. My perseverance deserved to
succeed. It did, though the success was very incomplete. Let me describe
it, such as it was; the future will fill up the gaps.

A female issues from the soil before my eyes. She flies away, followed
by several males. With the luchet I dig at the point of emergence; and,
as the excavation progresses, I sift between my fingers the rubbish of
sand mixed with mould. In the sweat of my brow, as I may justly say, I
must have removed nearly a cubic yard of material, when at last I make
a find. This is a recently ruptured cocoon, to the side of which adheres
an empty skin, the last remnant of the game on which the larva fed that
wrought the said cocoon. Considering the good condition of its silken
fabric, this cocoon may have belonged to the Scolia who has just quitted
her underground dwelling before my eyes. As for the skin accompanying
it, this has been so much spoilt by the moisture of the soil and by the
grassy roots that I cannot determine its origin exactly. The cranium,
however, which is better-preserved, the mandibles and certain details of
the general configuration lead me to suspect the larva of a Lamellicorn.

It is getting late. This is enough for to-day. I am worn out, but amply
repaid for my exertions by a broken cocoon and the puzzling skin of a
wretched grub. Young people who make a hobby of natural history, would
you like to discover whether the sacred fire flows in your veins?
Imagine yourselves returning from such an expedition. You are carrying
on your shoulder the peasant's heavy spade; your loins are stiff with
the laborious digging which you have just finished in a crouching
position; the heat of an August afternoon has set your brain simmering;
your eyelids are tired by the itch of an inflammation resulting from the
overpowering light in which you have been working; you have a devouring
thirst; and before you lies the dusty prospect of the miles that
divide you from your well-earned rest. Yet something stings within
you; forgetful of your present woes you are absolutely glad of your
excursion. Why? Because you have in your possession a shred of rotten
skin. If this is so, my young friends, you may go ahead, for you will
do something, though I warn you that this does not mean, by a long way,
that you will get on in the world.

I examined this shred of skin with all the care that it deserved. My
first suspicions were confirmed: a Lamellicorn, a Scarabaeid in the
larval state, is the first food of the Wasp whose cocoon I have just
unearthed. But which of the Scarabaeidae? And does this cocoon, my
precious booty, really belong to the Scoliae? The problem is beginning
to take shape. To attempt its solution we must go back to the Bois des
Issards.

I did go back and so often that my patience ended by being exhausted
before the problem of the Scoliae had received a satisfactory solution.
The difficulties are great indeed, under the conditions. Where am I
to dig in the indefinite stretch of sandy soil to light upon a spot
frequented by the Scoliae? The luchet is driven into the ground at
random; and almost invariably I find none of what I am seeking. To be
sure, the males, flying level with the ground, give me a hint, at the
outset, with their certainty of instinct, as to the spots where the
females ought to be; but their hints are very vague, because they go so
far in every direction. If I wished to examine the soil which a single
male explores in his flight, with its constantly changing course, I
should have to turn over, to the depth of perhaps a yard, at least four
poles of earth. This is too much for my strength and the time at my
disposal. Then, as the season advances, the males disappear, whereupon I
am suddenly deprived of their hints. To know more or less where I should
thrust my luchet, I have only one resource left, which is to watch for
the females emerging from the ground or else entering it. With a great
expenditure of time and patience I have at last had this windfall, very
rarely, I admit.

The Scoliae do not dig a burrow which can be compared with that of the
other Hunting Wasps; they have no fixed residence, with an unimpeded
gallery opening on the outer world and giving access to the cells, the
abodes of the larvae. They have no entrance- and exit-doors, no corridor
built in advance. If they have to make their way underground, any point
not hitherto turned over serves their purpose, provided that it be
not too hard for their digging-tools, which, for that matter, are
very powerful; if they have to come out, the point of exit is no less
indifferent. The Scolia does not bore the soil through which she passes:
she excavates and ploughs it with her legs and forehead; and the stuff
shifted remains where it lies, behind her, forthwith blocking the
passage which she has followed. When she is about to emerge into the
outer world, her advent is heralded by the fresh soil which heaps itself
into a mound as though heaved up by the snout of some tiny Mole. The
insect sallies forth; and the mound collapses, completely filling up the
exit-hole. If the Wasp is entering the ground, the digging-operations,
undertaken at an arbitrary point, quickly yield a cavity in which the
Scolia disappears, separated from the surface by the whole track of
shifted material.

I can easily trace her passage through the thickness of the soil by
certain long, winding cylinders, formed of loose materials in the
midst of compact and stable earth. These cylinders are numerous;
they sometimes run to a depth of twenty inches; they extend in all
directions, fairly often crossing one another. Not one of them ever
exhibits so much as a suspicion of an open gallery. They are obviously
not permanent ways of communication with the outer world, but
hunting-trails which the insect has followed once, without going back
to them. What was the Wasp seeking when she riddled the soil with these
tunnels which are now full of running sands? No doubt the food for
her family, the larva of which I possess the empty skin, now an
unrecognizable shred.

I begin to see a little light: the Scoliae are underground workers. I
already expected as much, having before now captured Scoliae soiled with
little earthy encrustations on the joints of the legs. The Wasp, who is
so careful to keep clean, taking advantage of the least leisure to brush
and polish herself, could never display such blemishes unless she were a
devoted earth-worker. I used to suspect their trade, now I know it. They
live underground, where they burrow in search of Lamellicorn-grubs,
just as the Mole burrows in search of the White Worm. (The larva of the
Cockchafer. This grub takes three years or more to arrive at maturity
underground.--Translator's Note.) It is even possible that, after
receiving the embraces of the males, they but very rarely return to the
surface, absorbed as they are by their maternal duties; and this,
no doubt, is why my patience becomes exhausted in watching for their
entrance and their emergence.

It is in the subsoil that they establish themselves and travel to and
fro; with the help of their powerful mandibles, their hard cranium,
their strong, prickly legs, they easily make themselves paths in
the loose earth. They are living ploughshares. By the end of August,
therefore, the female population is for the most part underground,
busily occupied in egg-laying and provisioning. Everything seems to tell
me that I should watch in vain for the appearance of a few females in
the broad daylight; I must resign myself to excavating at random.

The result was hardly commensurate with the labour which I expended on
digging. I found a few cocoons, nearly all broken, like the one which I
already possessed, and, like it, bearing on their side the tattered skin
of a larva of the same Scarabaeid. Two of these cocoons which are still
intact contained a dead adult Wasp. This was actually the Two-banded
Scolia, a precious discovery which changed my suspicions into a
certainty.

I also unearthed some cocoons, slightly different in appearance,
containing an adult inmate, likewise dead, in whom I recognized the
Interrupted Scolia. The remnants of the provisions again consisted of
the empty skin of a larva, also a Lamellicorn, but not the same as the
one hunted by the first Scolia. And this was all. Now here, now there,
I shifted a few cubic yards of soil, without managing to find fresh
provisions with the egg or the young larva. And yet it was the right
season, the egg-laying season, for the males, numerous at the outset,
had grown rarer day by day until they disappeared entirely. My lack of
success was due to the uncertainty of my excavations, in which I had
nothing to guide me over the indefinite area covered.

If I could at least identify the Scarabaeidae whose larvae form the
prey of the two Scoliae, the problem would be half solved. Let us try.
I collect all that the luchet has turned up: larvae, nymphs and adult
Beetles. My booty comprises two species of Lamellicorns: Anoxia villosa
and Euchlora Julii, both of whom I find in the perfect state, usually
dead, but sometimes alive. I obtain a few of their nymphs, a great piece
of luck, for the larval skin which accompanies them will serve me as a
standard of comparison. I come upon plenty of larvae, of all ages.
When I compare them with the cast garment abandoned by the nymphs, I
recognize some as belonging to the Anoxia and the rest to the Euchlora.

With these data, I perceive with absolute certainty that the empty skin
adhering to the cocoon of the Interrupted Scolia belongs to the Anoxia.
As for the Euchlora, she is not involved in the problem: the larva
hunted by the Two-banded Scolia does not belong to her any more than it
belongs to the Anoxia. Then with which Scarabaeid does the empty skin
which is still unknown to me correspond? The Lamellicorn whom I am
seeking must exist in the ground which I have been exploring, because
the Two-banded Scolia has established herself there. Later--oh, very
long afterwards!--I recognized where my search was at fault. In order
not to find a network of roots beneath my luchet and to render the work
of excavation lighter, I was digging the bare places, at some distance
from the thickets of holm-oak; and it was just in those thickets, which
are rich in vegetable mould, that I should have sought. There, near the
old stumps, in the soil consisting of dead leaves and rotting wood, I
should certainly have come upon the larva so greatly desired, as will be
proved by what I have still to say.

Here ends what my earlier investigations taught me. There is reason to
believe that the Bois des Issards would never have furnished me with the
precise data, in the form in which I wanted them. The remoteness of the
spot, the fatigue of the expeditions, which the heat rendered intensely
exhausting, the impossibility of knowing which points to attack would
undoubtedly have discouraged me before the problem had advanced a step
farther. Studies such as these call for home leisure and application,
for residence in a country village. You are then familiar with every
spot in your own grounds and the surrounding country and you can go to
work with certainty.

Twenty-three years have passed; and here I am at Serignan, where I
have become a peasant, working by turns on my writing-pad and my
cabbage-patch. On the 14th of August, 1880, Favier (An ex-soldier who
acted as the author's gardener and factotum.--Translator's Note.)
clears away a heap of mould consisting of vegetable refuse and of leaves
stacked in a corner against the wall of the paddock. This clearance is
considered necessary because Bull, when the lovers' moon arrives, uses
this hillock to climb to the top of the wall and thence to repair to the
canine wedding the news of which is brought to him by the effluvia borne
upon the air. His pilgrimage fulfilled, he returns, with a discomfited
look and a slit ear, but always ready, once he has had his feed, to
repeat the escapade. To put an end to this licentious behaviour, which
has cost him so many gaping wounds, we decided to remove the heap of
soil which serves him as a ladder of escape.

Favier calls me while in the midst of his labours with the spade and
barrow:

"Here's a find, sir, a great find! Come and look."

I hasten to the spot. The find is a magnificent one indeed and of a
nature to fill me with delight, awakening all my old recollections of
the Bois des Issards. Any number of females of the Two-banded Scolia,
disturbed at their work, are emerging here and there from the depth of
the soil. The cocoons also are plentiful, each lying next to the skin
of the victim on which the larva has fed. They are all open but still
fresh: they date from the present generation; the Scoliae whom I unearth
have quitted them not long since. I learnt later, in fact, that the
hatching took place in the course of July.

In the same heap of mould is a swarming colony of Scarabaeidae in the
form of larvae, nymphs and adult insects. It includes the largest of
our Beetles, the common Rhinoceros Beetle, or Oryctes nasicornis. I find
some who have been recently liberated, whose wing-cases, of a glossy
brown, now see the sunlight for the first time; I find others enclosed
in their earthen shell, almost as big as a Turkey's egg. More frequent
is her powerful larva, with its heavy paunch, bent into a hook. I note
the presence of a second bearer of the nasal horn, Oryctes Silenus,
who is much smaller than her kinswoman, and of Pentodon punctatus, a
Scarabaeid who ravages my lettuces.

But the predominant population consists of Cetoniae, or Rosechafers,
most of them enclosed in their egg-shaped shells, with earthen walls
encrusted with dung. There are three different species: C. aurata, C.
morio and C. floricola. Most of them belong to the first species. Their
larvae, which are easily recognized by their singular talent for walking
on their backs with their legs in the air, are numbered by the hundred.
Every age is represented, from the new born grub to the podgy larva on
the point of building its shell.

This time the problem of the victuals is solved. When I compare the
larval slough sticking to the Scolia's cocoons with the Cetonia-larvae
or, better, with the skin cast by these larvae, under cover of the
cocoon, at the moment of the nymphal transformation, I establish an
absolute identity. The Two-banded Scolia rations each of her eggs with
a Cetonia-grub. Behold the riddle which my irksome searches in the Bois
des Issards had not enabled me to solve. To-day, at my threshold, the
difficult problem becomes child's play. I can investigate the question
easily to the fullest possible extent; I need not put myself out at all;
at any hour of the day, at any period that seems favourable, I have
the requisite elements before my eyes. Ah, dear village, so poor, so
countrified, how happily inspired was I when I came to ask of you
a hermit's retreat, where I could live in the company of my beloved
insects and, in so doing, set down not too unworthily a few chapters of
their wonderful history!

According to the Italian observer Passerini, the Garden Scolia feeds
her family on the larvae of Oryctes nasicornis, in the heaps of old
tan-waste removed from the hot-houses. I do not despair of seeing
this colossal Wasp coming to establish herself one day in my heaps of
leaf-mould, in which the same Scarabaeid is swarming. Her rarity in
my part of the country is probably the only cause that has hitherto
prevented the realization of my wishes.

I have just shown that the Two-banded Scolia feeds in infancy on
Cetonia-larvae and particularly on those of C. aurata, C. morio and C.
floricola. These three species dwell together in the rubbish-heap just
explored; their larvae differ so little that I should have to examine
them minutely to distinguish the one from the other; and even then I
should not be certain of succeeding. It seems probable that the Scolia
does not choose between them, that she uses all three indiscriminately.
Perhaps she even assails other larvae, inhabitants, like the foregoing,
of heaps of rotting vegetable-matter. I therefore set down the Cetonia
genus generally as forming the prey of the Two-banded Scolia.

Lastly, round about Avignon, the Interrupted Scolia used to prey upon
the larva of the Shaggy Anoxia (A. villosa). At Serignan, which is
surrounded by the same kind of sandy soil, without other vegetation than
a few sparse seed-bearing grasses, I find her rationing her young with
the Morning Anoxia (A. matutinalis). Oryctes, Cetoniae and Anoxiae
in the larval state: here then is the prey of the three Scoliae whose
habits we know. The three Beetles are Lamellicorns, Scarabaeidae. We
shall have occasion later to consider the reason of this very striking
coincidence.

For the moment, the business in hand is to move the heap of leaf-mould
to some other place, with the wheelbarrow. This is Favier's work, while
I myself collect the disturbed population in glass jars, in order to put
them back into the new rubbish-heap with all the consideration which
my plans owe to them. The laying-time has not yet set in, for I find
no eggs, no young Scolia-larvae. September apparently will be the
propitious month. But there are bound to be many injured in the course
of this upheaval; some of the Scoliae have flown away who will perhaps
have a certain difficulty in finding the new site; I have disarranged
everything in the overturned heap. To allow tranquility to be restored
and habit to resume its rounds, to give the population time to increase
and replace the fugitives and the injured, it would be best, I think, to
leave the heap alone this year and not to resume my investigations until
the next. After the thorough confusion due to the removal, I should
jeopardize success by being too precipitate. Let us wait one year more.
I decide accordingly, curb my impatience and resign myself. We will
simply confine ourselves to enlarging the heap, when the leaves begin to
fall, by accumulating the refuse that strews the paddock, so that we may
have a richer field of operations.

In the following August, my visits to the mound of leaf-mould become a
daily habit. By two o'clock in the afternoon, when the sun has cleared
the adjacent pine-trees and is shining on the heap, numbers of male
Scoliae arrive from the neighbouring fields, where they have been
slaking their thirst on the eryngo-heads. Incessantly coming and going
with an indolent flight, they circle round the heap. If some female
rise from the soil, those who have seen her dart forward. A not very
turbulent affray decides which of the suitors shall be the possessor;
and the couple fly away over the wall. This is a repetition of what I
used to see in the Bois des Issards. By the time that August is over.
The males have ceased to show themselves. The mothers do not appear
either: they are busy underground, establishing their families.

On the 2nd of September, I decide upon a search with my son Emile,
who handles the fork and the shovel, while I examine the clods dug up.
Victory! A magnificent result, finer than any that my fondest ambition
would have dared to contemplate! Here is a vast array of Cetonia-larvae,
all flaccid, motionless, lying on their backs, with a Scolia's egg
sticking to the centre of their abdomen; here are young Scolia-larvae
dipping their heads into the entrails of their victims; here are others
farther advanced, munching their last mouthfuls of a prey which is
drained dry and reduced to a skin; here are some laying the foundation
of their cocoons with a reddish silk, which looks as if it had been dyed
in Bullock's blood; here are some whose cocoons are finished. There is
plenty of everything, from the egg to the larva whose period of activity
is over. I mark the 2nd of September as a red-letter day; it has given
me the final key to a riddle which has kept me in suspense for nearly
half a century.

I place my spoils religiously in shallow, wide-mouthed glass jars
containing a layer of finely sifted mould. In this soft bed, which is
identical in character with the natal surroundings, I make some faint
impressions with my fingers, so many cavities, each of which receives
one of my subjects, one only. A pane of glass covers the mouth of the
receptacle. In this way I prevent a too rapid evaporation and keep my
nurselings under my eyes without fear of disturbing them. Now that all
this is in order, let us proceed to record events.

The Cetonia-larvae which I find with a Scolia's egg upon their ventral
surface are distributed in the mould at random, without special
cavities, without any sign of some sort of structure. They are smothered
in the mould, just as are the larvae which have not been injured by the
Wasp. As my excavations in the Bois des Issards told me, the Scolia does
not prepare a lodging for her family; she knows nothing of the art of
cell-building. Her offspring occupies a fortuitous abode, on which the
mother expends no architectural pains. Whereas the other Hunting Wasps
prepare a dwelling to which the provisions are carried, sometimes from
a distance, the Scolia confines herself to digging her bed of leaf-mould
until she comes upon a Cetonia-larva. When she finds a quarry, she stabs
it on the spot, in order to immobilize it; and, again on the spot, she
lays an egg on the ventral surface of the paralysed creature. That is
all. The mother goes in quest of another prey without troubling further
about the egg which has just been laid. There is no effort of carting
or building. At the very spot where the Cetonia-grub is caught and
paralysed, the Scolia-larva hatches, grows and weaves its cocoon. The
establishment of the family is thus reduced to the simplest possible
expression.



CHAPTER 3. A DANGEROUS DIET.

The Scolia's egg is in no way exceptional in shape. It is white,
cylindrical, straight and about four millimetres long by one millimetre
thick. (About.156 x.039 inch.--Translator's Note.) It is fixed, by its
fore-end, upon the median line of the victim's abdomen, well to the rear
of the legs, near the beginning of the brown patch formed by the mass of
food under the skin.

I watch the hatching. The grub, still wearing upon its hinder parts the
delicate pellicle which it has just shed, is fixed to the spot to which
the egg itself adhered by its cephalic extremity. A striking spectacle,
that of the feeble creature, only this moment hatched, boring, for
its first mouthful, into the paunch of its enormous prey, which
lies stretched upon its back. The nascent tooth takes a day over the
difficult task. Next morning the skin has yielded; and I find the
new-born larva with its head plunged into a small, round, bleeding
wound.

In size the grub is the same as the egg, whose dimensions I have
just given. Now the Cetonia-larva, to meet the Scolia's requirements,
averages thirty millimetres in length by nine in thickness (1.17 x.35
inch.--Translator's Note.), whence follows that its bulk is six or seven
hundred times as great as that of the newly-hatched grub of the
Scolia. Here certainly is a quarry which, were it active and capable of
wriggling and biting, would expose the nurseling to terrible attacks.
The danger has been averted by the mother's stiletto; and the fragile
grub attacks the monster's paunch with as little hesitation as though it
were sucking the breast.

Day by day the young Scolia's head penetrates farther into the Cetonia's
belly. To pass through the narrow orifice made in the skin, the
fore-part of the body contracts and lengthens out, as though drawn
through a die-plate. The larva thus assumes a rather strange form. Its
hinder half, which is constantly outside the victim's belly, has the
shape and fulness usual in the larvae of the Digger-wasps, whereas the
front half, which, once it has dived under the skin of the exploited
victim, does not come out again until the time arrives for spinning the
cocoon, tapers off suddenly into a snake-like neck. This front part is
moulded, so to speak, by the narrow entrance-hole made in the skin and
henceforth retains its slender formation. As a matter of fact, a
similar configuration recurs, in varying degrees, in the larvae of the
Digger-wasps whose ration consists of a bulky quarry which takes a
long time to consume. These include the Languedocian Sphex, with her
Ephippiger, and the Hairy Ammophila, with her Grey Worm. There is none
of this sudden constriction, dividing the creature into two disparate
halves, when the victuals consist of numerous and comparatively small
items. The larva then retains its usual shape, being obliged to pass, at
brief intervals, from one joint in its larder to the next.

From the first bite of the mandibles, until the whole head of game is
consumed, the Scolia-larva is never seen to withdraw its head and its
long neck from inside the creature which it is devouring. I suspect the
reason of this persistence in attacking a single point; I even seem
to perceive the need for a special art in the manner of eating. The
Cetonia-larva is a square meal in itself, one large dish, which has to
retain a suitable freshness until the end. The young Scolia, therefore,
must attack with discretion, at the unvarying point chosen by the mother
on the ventral surface, for the entrance-hole is at the exact point
where the egg was fixed. As the nurseling's neck lengthens and dives
deeper, the victim's entrails are nibbled gradually and methodically:
first, the least essential; next, those whose removal leaves yet a
remnant of life; lastly, those whose loss inevitably entails death,
followed very soon by putrefaction.

At the first bites we see the victim's blood oozing through the wound.
It is a highly-elaborated fluid, easy of digestion, and forms a sort of
milk-diet for the new-born grub. The little ogre's teat is the bleeding
paunch of the Cetonia-larva. The latter will not die of the wound,
at least not for some time. The next thing to be tackled is the fatty
substance which wraps the internal organs in its delicate folds. This
again is a loss which the Cetonia can suffer without dying then and
there. Now comes the turn of the muscular layer which lines the skin;
now, that of the essential organs; now, that of the nerve-centres and
the trachean network, whereupon the last gleam of light is extinguished
and the Cetonia reduced to a mere bag, empty but intact, save for the
entrance-hole made in the middle of the belly. From now onwards, these
remains may rot if they will: the Scolia, by its methodical fashion of
consuming its victuals, has succeeded in keeping them fresh to the very
last; and now you may see it, replete, shining with health, withdraw its
long neck from the bag of skin and prepare to weave the cocoon in which
its development will be completed.

It is possible that I may not be quite accurate as to the precise order
in which the organs are consumed, for it is not easy to perceive what
happens inside the exploited larva's body. The ruling feature in this
scientific method of eating, which proceeds from the parts less to the
parts more necessary to preserve a remnant of life, is none the less
obvious. If direct observation did not already to some degree confirm
it, a mere examination of the half-eaten larva would do so in the most
positive fashion.

The Cetonia-larva is at first a plump grub. Drained by the Scolia's
tooth, it gradually becomes limp and wrinkled. In a few days' time it
resembles a shrivelled bit of bacon-fat and then a bag whose two
sides have fallen in. Yet this bit of bacon and this bag have the same
characteristic look of fresh meat as had the grub before it was bitten
into. Despite the persistent nibbling of the Scolia, life continues,
holding at bay the inroads of putrefaction until the mandibles have
given their last bites. Does not this remnant of tenacious vitality in
itself show that the organs of primary importance are the last to be
attacked? Does it not prove that there is a progressive dismemberment
passing from the less essential to the indispensable?

Would you like to see what becomes of a Cetonia-larva when the organism
is wounded in its vital centres at the very beginning? The experiment
is an easy one; and I made a point of trying it. A sewing-needle, first
softened and flattened into a blade, then retempered and sharpened,
gives me a most delicate scalpel. With this instrument I make a fine
incision, through which I remove the mass of nerves whose remarkable
structure we shall soon have occasion to study. The thing is done: the
wound, which does not look serious, has left the creature a corpse, a
real corpse. I lay my victim on a bed of moist earth, in a jar with a
glass lid; in fact, I establish it in the same conditions as those of
the larvae on which the Scoliae feed. By the next day, without changing
shape, it has turned a repulsive brown; presently it dissolves into
noisome putrescence. On the same bed of earth, under the same glass
cover, in the same moist, warm atmosphere, the larvae three-quarters
eaten by the Scoliae retain, on the contrary, the appearance of healthy
flesh.

If a single stroke of my dagger, fashioned from the point of a needle,
results in immediate death and early putrefaction; if the repeated bites
of the Scolia gut the creature's body and reduce it almost to a skin
without completely killing it, the striking contrast between these two
results must be due to the relative importance of the organs injured. I
destroy the nerve-centres and inevitably kill my larva, which is putrid
by the following day; the Scolia attacks the reserves of fat, the blood,
the muscles and does not kill its victim, which will provide it with
wholesome food until the end. But it is clear that, if the Scolia were
to set to work as I did, there would be nothing left, after the first
few bites, but an actual corpse, discharging fluids which would be fatal
to it within twenty-four hours. The mother, it is true, in order to
assure the immobility of her prey, has injected the poison of her sting
into the nerve-centres. Her operation cannot be compared with mine in
any respect. She practises the method of the skilful physiologist who
induces anaesthesia; I go to work like the butcher who chops, cuts and
disembowels. The sting leaves the nerve-centres intact. Deprived
of sensibility by the poison, they have lost the power of provoking
muscular contractions; but who can say that, numbed as they are, they
no longer serve to maintain a faint vitality? The flame is extinguished,
but there is still a glowing speck upon the wick. I, a rough blunderer,
do more than blow out the lamp: I throw away the wick and all is over.
The grub would do the same if it bit straight into the mass of nerves.

Everything confirms the fact: the Scolia and the other Hunting Wasps
whose provisions consist of bulky heads of game are gifted with a
special art of eating, an exquisitely delicate art which saves a remnant
of life in the prey devoured, until it is all consumed. When the prey is
a small one, this precaution is superfluous. Consider, for instance, the
Bembex-grubs in the midst of their heap of Flies. The prey seized upon
is broached on the back, the belly, the head, the thorax, indifferently.
The larva munches a given spot, which it leaves to munch a second,
passing to a third and a fourth, at the bidding of its changing whims.
It seems to taste and select, by repeated trials, the mouthfuls most to
its liking. Thus bitton at several points, covered with wounds, the Fly
is soon a shapeless mass which would putrefy very quickly if the meagre
dish were not devoured at a single meal. Allow the Scolia-grub the same
unlicensed gluttony: it would perish beside its corpulent victim,
which should have kept fresh for a fortnight, but which almost from the
beginning would be no more than a filthy putrescence.

This art of careful eating does not seem easy to practise: at least, the
larva, if ever so little diverted from its usual courses, is no longer
able to apply its talent as a capable trencherman. This will be proved
by experiment. I must begin by observing that, when I spoke of my larva
which turned putrid within twenty-four hours, I adopted an extreme case
for the sake of greater clearness. The Scolia, taking its first bite,
does not and cannot go to such lengths. Nevertheless it behooves us to
enquire whether, in the consumption of the victuals, the initial point
of attack is a matter of indifference and whether the rummaging through
the entrails of the victim entails a determined order, without which
success is uncertain or even impossible. To these delicate questions no
one, I think, can reply. Where science is silent, perhaps the grub will
speak. We will try.

I move from its position a Scolia-grub which has attained a quarter or a
third of its full growth. The long neck plunged into the victim's belly
is rather difficult to extract, because of the need of molesting the
creature as little as possible. I succeed, by means of a little patience
and repeated strokes with the tip of a paint-brush. I now turn the
Cetonia-larva over, back uppermost, at the bottom of the little hollow
made by pressing my finger in the layer of mould. Lastly, I place the
Scolia on its victim's back. Here is my grub under the same conditions
as just now, with this difference, that the back and not the belly of
its victim is presented to its mandibles.

I watch it for a whole afternoon. It writhes about; it moves its little
head now in this direction, now in that, frequently laying it on the
Cetonia, but without fixing it anywhere. The day draws to a close; and
still it has accomplished nothing. There are restless movements, nothing
more. Hunger, I tell myself, will eventually induce it to bite. I am
wrong. Next morning I find it more anxious than the day before and still
groping about, without resolving to fix its mandibles anywhere. I
leave it alone for half a day longer without obtaining any result. Yet
twenty-four hours of abstinence must have awakened a good appetite,
above all in a creature which, if left undisturbed, would not have
ceased eating.

Excessive hunger cannot induce it to nibble at an unlawful spot. Is this
due to feebleness of the teeth? By no means: the Cetonia's skin is no
tougher on the back than on the belly; moreover, the grub is capable of
perforating the skin when it leaves the egg; a fortiori, it must be more
capable of doing so now that it has attained a sturdy growth. Thus we
see no lack of ability, but an obstinate refusal to nibble at a point
which ought to be respected. Who knows? On this side perhaps the grub's
dorsal vessel would be wounded, its heart, an organ indispensable to
life. The fact remains that my attempts to make the grub tackle its
victim from the back have failed. Does this mean that it entertains the
least suspicion of the danger which it might incur were it to produce
putrefaction by awkwardly carving its victuals from the back? It would
be absurd to give such an idea a moment's consideration. Its refusal is
dictated by a preordained decree which it is bound to obey.

My Scolia-grubs would die of starvation if I left them on their victim's
back. I therefore restore matters as they were, with the Cetonia-larva
belly uppermost and the young Scolia on top. I might utilise the
subjects of my previous experiments; but, as I have to take precautions
against the disturbance which may have been caused by the test already
undergone, I prefer to operate on new patients, a luxury in which the
richness of my menagerie allows me to indulge. I move the Scolia from
its position, extract its head from the entrails of the Cetonia-larva
and leave it to its own resources on its victim's belly. Betraying every
symptom of uneasiness, the grub gropes, hesitates, casts about and does
not insert its mandibles anywhere, though it is now the ventral surface
which it is exploring. It would not display greater hesitation if placed
on the back of the larva. I repeat, who knows? On this side it might
perhaps injure the nervous plexus, which is even more essential than the
dorsal vessel. The inexperienced grub must not drive in its mandibles at
random; its future is jeopardized if it gives a single ill-judged bite.
If it gnaws at the spot where I myself operated with my needle wrought
into a scalpel, its victuals will very soon turn putrid. Once more,
then, we witness an absolute refusal to perforate the skin of the victim
elsewhere than at the very point where the egg was fixed.

The mother selects this point, which is undoubtedly that most favourable
to the future prosperity of the larva, though I am not able clearly to
discern the reasons for her choice; she fixes the egg to it; and the
place where the opening is to be made is henceforth determined. It is
here that the grub must bite: only here, never elsewhere. Its invincible
refusal to tackle the Cetonia in any other part, even though it should
die of starvation, shews us how rigorous is the rule of conduct with
which its instinct is inspired.

As it gropes about, the grub laid on the victim's ventral surface sooner
or later rediscovers the gaping wound from which I have removed it. If
this takes too long for my patience, I can myself guide its head to the
place with the point of a paint-brush. The grub then recognizes the hole
of its own making, slips its neck into it and little by little dives
into the Cetonia's belly, so that the original state of affairs appears
to be exactly restored. And yet its successful rearing is henceforth
highly problematical. It is possible that the larva will prosper,
complete its development and spin its cocoon; it is also possible--and
the case is not unusual--that the Cetonia-larva will soon turn brown
and putrid. We then see the Scolia itself turn brown, distended as it
is with putrescent foodstuffs, and then cease all movement, without
attempting to withdraw from the sanies. It dies on the spot, poisoned by
its excessively high game.

What can be the meaning of this sudden corruption of the victuals,
followed by the death of the Scolia, when everything appeared to have
returned to its normal condition? I see only one explanation.
Disturbed in its activities and diverted from its usual courses by
my interference, the grub, when replaced on the wound from which I
extracted it, was unable to rediscover the lode at which it was working
a few minutes earlier; it thrust its way at random into the victim's
entrails; and a few untimely bites extinguished the last sparks of
vitality. Its confusion rendered it clumsy; and the mistake cost it its
life. It dies poisoned by the rich food which, if consumed according to
the rules, should have made it grow plump and lusty.

I was anxious to observe the deadly effects of a disturbed meal in
another fashion. This time the victim itself shall disorder the grub's
activities. The Cetonia-larva, as served up to the young Scolia by its
mother, is profoundly paralysed. Its inertia is complete and so striking
that it constitutes one of the leading features of this narrative. But
we will not anticipate. For the moment, the thing is to substitute for
this inert larva a similar larva, but one not paralysed, one very much
alive. To ensure that it shall not double up and crush the grub, I
confine myself to reducing it to helplessness, leaving it otherwise just
as I extracted it from its burrow. I must also be careful of its legs
and mandibles, the least touch of which would rip open the nurseling.
With a few turns of the finest wire I fix it to a little slab of cork,
with its belly in the air. Next, to provide the grub with a ready-made
hole, knowing that it will refuse to make one for itself, I contrive a
slight incision in the skin, at the point where the Scolia lays her egg.
I now place the grub upon the larva, with its head touching the bleeding
wound, and lay the whole on a bed of mould in a transparent beaker
protected by a pane of glass.

Unable to move, to wriggle, to scratch with its legs or snap with
its mandibles, the Cetonia-larva, a new Prometheus bound, offers
its defenceless flanks to the little Vulture destined to devour its
entrails. Without too much hesitation, the young Scolia settles down
to the wound made by my scalpel, which to the grub represents the wound
whence I have just removed it. It thrusts its neck into the belly of
its prey; and for a couple of days all seems to go well. Then, lo and
behold, the Cetonia turns putrid and the Scolia dies, poisoned by the
ptomaines of the decomposing game! As before, I see it turn brown and
die on the spot, still half inside the toxic corpse.

The fatal issue of my experiment is easily explained. The Cetonia-larva
is alive in every sense. True, I have, by means of bonds, suppressed its
outward movements, in order to provide the nurseling with a quiet meal,
devoid of danger; but it was not in my power to subdue its internal
movements, the quivering of the viscera and muscles irritated by its
forced immobility and by the Scolia's bites. The victim is in possession
of its full power of sensation; and it expresses the pain experienced
as best it may, by contractions. Embarrassed by these tremors, these
twitches of suffering flesh, incommoded at every mouthful, the grub
chews away at random and kills the larva almost as soon as it has
started on it. In a victim paralysed by the regulation sting, the
conditions would be very different. There are no external movements,
nor any internal movements either, when the mandibles bite, because the
victim is insensible. The grub, undisturbed in any way, is then able,
with an unfaltering tooth, to pursue its scientific method of eating.

These marvellous results interested me too much not to inspire me with
fresh devices when I pursued my investigations. Earlier enquiries had
taught me that the larvae of the Digger-wasps are fairly indifferent to
the nature of the game, though the mother always supplies them with the
same diet. I had succeeded in rearing them on a great variety of prey,
without paying regard to their normal fare. I shall return to this
subject later, when I hope to demonstrate its great philosophical
significance. Let us profit by these data and try to discover what
happens when we give the Scolia food which is not properly its own.

I select from my heap of garden-mould, that inexhaustible mine, two
larvae of the Rhinoceros Beetle, Oryctes nasicornis, about one-third
full-grown, so that their size may not be out of proportion to the
Scolia's. It is in fact almost identical with the size of the Cetonia.
I paralyse one of them by giving an injection of ammonia in the
nerve-centres. I make a fine incision in its belly and I place the
Scolia on the opening. The dish pleases my charge; and it would
be strange indeed if this were not so, considering that another
Scolia-grub, the larva of the Garden Scolia, feeds on the Oryctes.
The dish suits it, for before long it has burrowed half-way into
the succulent paunch. This time all goes well. Will the rearing be
successful? Not a bit of it! On the third day, the Oryctes decomposes
and the Scolia dies. Which shall we hold responsible for the failure,
myself or the grub? Myself who, perhaps too unskilfully, administered
the injection of ammonia, or the grub which, a novice at dissecting a
prey differing from its own, did not know how to practise its craft upon
a changed victim and began to bite before the proper time?

In my uncertainty, I try again. This time I shall not interfere, so that
my clumsiness cannot be to blame. As I described when speaking of the
Cetonia-larva, the Oryctes-larva now lies bound, quite alive, on a strip
of cork. As usual, I make a small opening in the belly, to entice the
grub by means of a bleeding wound and facilitate its access. I obtain
the same negative result. In a little while, the Oryctes is a noisome
mass on which the nurseling lies poisoned. The failure was foreseen: to
the difficulties presented by a prey unknown to my charge was added the
commotion caused by the wriggling of an unparalysed animal.

We will try once more, this time with a victim paralysed not by me, an
unskilled operator, but by an adept whose ability ranks so high that it
is beyond discussion. Chance favours me to perfection: yesterday, in a
warm sheltered corner, at the foot of a sandy bank, I discovered three
cells of the Languedocian Sphex, each with its Ephippiger and the
recently laid egg. This is the game I want, a corpulent prey, of a
size suited to the Scolia and, what is more, in splendid condition,
artistically paralysed according to rule by a master among masters.

As usual, I install my three Ephippigers in a glass jar, on a bed of
mould; I remove the egg of the Sphex and on each victim, after slightly
incising the skin of the belly, I place a young Scolia-grub. For three
or four days my charges feed upon this game, so novel to them, without
any sign of repugnance or hesitation. By the fluctuations of the
digestive canal I perceive that the work of nutrition is proceeding
as it should; things are happening just as if the dish were a
Cetonia-larva. The change of diet, complete though it is, has in no way
affected the appetite of the Scolia-grubs. But this prosperous condition
does not last long. About the fourth day, a little sooner in one case,
a little later in another, the three Ephippigers become putrid and the
Scoliae die at the same time.

This result is eloquent. Had I left the egg of the Sphex to hatch, the
larva coming out of it would have fed upon the Ephippiger; and for the
hundredth time I should have witnessed an incomprehensible spectacle,
that of an animal which, devoured piecemeal for nearly a fortnight,
grows thin and empty, shrivels up and yet retains to the very end the
freshness peculiar to living flesh. Substitute for this Sphex-larva a
Scolia-larva of almost the same size; let the dish be the same though
the guest is different; and healthy live flesh is promptly replaced
by pestilent rotten flesh. That which under the mandibles of the Sphex
would for a long while have remained wholesome food promptly becomes a
poisonous liquescence under the mandibles of the Scolia.

It is impossible to explain the preservation of the victuals until
finally consumed by supposing that the venom injected by the Wasp when
she delivers her paralysing stings possesses antiseptic properties.
The three Ephippigers were operated on by the Sphex. Able to keep fresh
under the mandibles of the Sphex-larvae, why did they promptly go bad
under the mandibles of the Scolia-larvae? Any idea of an antiseptic must
needs be rejected: a liquid preservative which would act in the first
case could not fail to act in the second, as its virtues would not
depend on the teeth of the consumer.

Those of you who are versed in the knowledge attaching to this problem,
investigate, I beg you, search, sift, see if you can discover the reason
why the victuals keep fresh when consumed by a Sphex, whereas they
promptly become putrid when consumed by a Scolia. For me, I see only one
reason; and I very much doubt whether any one can suggest another.

Both larvae practise a special art of eating, which is determined by the
nature of the game. The Sphex, when sitting down to an Ephippiger, the
food that has fallen to its lot, knows thoroughly how to consume it and
how to preserve, to the very end, the glimmer of life which keeps it
fresh; but, if it has to browse upon a Cetonia-grub, whose different
structure would confuse its talents as a dissector, it would soon have
nothing before it but a heap of putrescence. The Scolia, in its turn,
is familiar with the method of eating the Cetonia-grub, its invariable
portion; but it does not understand the art of eating the Ephippiger,
though the dish is to its taste. Unable to dissect this unknown species
of game, its mandibles slash away at random, killing the creature
outright as soon as they take their first bites of the deeper tissues of
the victim. That is the whole secret.

One more word, on which I shall enlarge in another chapter. I observe
that the Scoliae to which I give Ephippigers paralysed by the Sphex
keep in excellent condition, despite the change of diet, so long as
the provisions retain their freshness. They languish when the game goes
high; and they die when putridity supervenes. Their death, therefore,
is due not to an unaccustomed diet, but to poisoning by one or other
of those terrible toxins which are engendered by animal corruption
and which chemistry calls by the name of ptomaines. Therefore,
notwithstanding the fatal outcome of my three attempts, I remain
persuaded that the unfamiliar method of rearing would have been
perfectly successful had the Ephippigers not gone bad, that is, if the
Scoliae had known how to eat them according to the rules.

What a delicate and dangerous thing is the art of eating in these
carnivorous larvae supplied with a single victim, which they have to
spend a fortnight in consuming, on the express condition of not killing
it until the very end! Could our physiological science, of which, with
good reason, we are so proud, describe, without blundering, the method
to be followed in the successive mouthfuls? How has a miserable grub
learnt what our knowledge cannot tell us? By habit, the Darwinians will
reply, who see in instinct an acquired habit.

Before deciding this serious matter, I will ask you to reflect that the
first Wasp, of whatever kind, that thought of feeding her progeny on
a Cetonia-grub or on any other large piece of game demanding long
preservation could necessarily have left no descendants unless the art
of consuming food without causing putrescence had been practised, with
all its scrupulous caution, from the first generation onwards. Having as
yet learnt nothing by habit or by atavistic transmission, since it was
making a first beginning, the nurseling would bite into its provender at
random. It would be starving, it would have no respect for its prey.
It would carve its joint at random; and we have just seen the fatal
consequence of an ill-directed bite. It would perish--I have just proved
this in the most positive manner--it would perish, poisoned by its
victim, already dead and putrid.

To prosper, it would have, although a novice, to know what was permitted
and what forbidden in ransacking the creature's entrails; nor would
it be enough for the larva to be approximately in possession of this
difficult secret: it would be indispensable that it should possess the
secret completely, for a single bite, if delivered before the right
moment, would inevitably involve its own demise. The Scoliae of my
experiments are not novices, far from it: they are the descendants of
carvers that have practised their art since Scoliae first came into
the world; nevertheless they all perish from the decomposition of the
rations supplied, when I try to feed them on Ephippigers paralysed by
the Sphex. Very expert in the method of attacking the Cetonia, they do
not know how to set about the business of discreetly consuming a species
of game new to them. All that escapes them is a few details, for the
trade of an ogre fed on live flesh is familiar to them in its general
features; and these unheeded details are enough to turn their food into
poison. What, then, happened in the beginning, when the larva bit
for the first time into a luscious victim? The inexperienced creature
perished; of that there is not a shadow of doubt, unless we admit an
absurdity and imagine the larva of antiquity feeding upon those terrible
ptomaines which so swiftly kill its descendants to-day.

Nothing will ever make me admit and no unprejudiced mind can admit
that what was once food has become a horrible poison. What the larva of
antiquity ate was live flesh and not putrescence. Nor can it be admitted
that the chances of fortune can have led at the first trial to success
in a system of nourishment so full of pit-falls: fortuitous results are
preposterous amid so many complications. Either the feeding is strictly
methodical at the beginning, in conformity with the organic exigencies
of the prey devoured, and the Wasp established her race; or else it was
hesitating, without determined rules, and the Wasp left no successor. In
the first case we behold innate instinct; in the second acquired habit.

A strange acquisition, truly! An acquisition presumed to be made by
an impossible creature; an acquisition supposed to develop in no less
impossible successors! Though the snow-ball, slowly rolling, at
last becomes an enormous sphere, it is still necessary that the
starting-point shall not have been NIL. The big ball implies the little
ball, as small as you please. Now, in harking back to the origin of
these acquired habits, if I interrogate the possibilities I obtain zero
as the only answer. If the animal does not know its trade thoroughly,
if it has to acquire something, all the more if it has to acquire
everything, it perishes: that is inevitable; without the little
snow-ball the big snow-ball cannot be rolled. If it has nothing to
acquire, if it knows all that it needs to know, it flourishes and
leaves descendants behind it. But then it possesses innate instinct, the
instinct which learns nothing and forgets nothing, the instinct which is
steadfast throughout time.

The building up of theories has never appealed to me: I suspect them one
and all. To argue nebulously upon dubious premises likes me no better. I
observe, I experiment and I let the facts speak for themselves. We have
just heard these facts. Let each now decide for himself whether instinct
is an innate faculty or an acquired habit.



CHAPTER 4. THE CETONIA-LARVA.

The Scolia's feeding-period lasts, on the average, for a dozen days or
so. By then the victuals are no more than a crumpled bag, a skin emptied
of the last scrap of nutriment. A little earlier, the russet-yellow tint
announces the extinction of the last spark of life in the creature that
is being devoured. The empty skin is pushed back to make space; the
dining-room, a shapeless cavity with crumbling walls, is tidied up a
little; and the Scolia-grub sets to work on its cocoon without further
delay.

The first courses form a general scaffolding, which finds a support
here and there on the earthen walls, and consist of a rough, blood-red
fabric. When the larva is merely laid, as required by my investigations,
in a hollow made with the finger-tip in the bed of mould, it is not able
to spin its cocoon, for want of a ceiling to which to fasten the upper
threads of its network. To weave its cocoon, every spinning larva
is compelled to isolate itself in a hammock slung in an open-work
enclosure, which enables it to distribute its thread uniformly in all
directions. If there be no ceiling, the upper part of the cocoon cannot
be fashioned, because the worker lacks the necessary points of support.
Under these conditions my Scolia-grubs contrive at most to upholster
their little pit with a thick down of reddish silk. Discouraged by
futile endeavours, some of them die. It is as if they had been killed by
the silk which they omit to disgorge because they are unable to make the
right use of it. This, if we were not watchful, would be a very frequent
cause of failure in our attempts at artificial rearing. But, once the
danger has been perceived, the remedy is simple. I make a ceiling over
the cavity by laying a short strip of paper above it. If I want to see
how matters are progressing, I bend the strip into a semicircle, into
a half-cylinder with open ends. Those who wish to play the breeder for
themselves will be able to profit by these little practical details.

In twenty-four hours the cocoon is finished; at least, it no longer
allows us to see the grub, which is doubtless making the walls of its
dwelling still thicker. At first the cocoon is a vivid red; later it
changes to a light chestnut-brown. Its form is that of an ellipsoid,
with a major axis 26 millimetres in length, while the minor axis
measures 11 millimetres. (1.014 x.429 inch.--Translator's Note.) These
dimensions, which incidentally are inclined to vary slightly, are those
of the female cocoons. In the other sex they are smaller and may measure
as little as 17 millimetres in length by 7 millimetres in width. (.663
x.273 inch.--Translator's Note.)

The two ends of the ellipsoid have the same form, so much so that it is
only thanks to an individual peculiarity, independent of the shape, that
we can tell the cephalic from the anal extremity. The cephalic pole is
flexible and yields to the pressure of my tweezers; the anal pole is
hard and unyielding. The wrapper is double, as in the cocoons of
the Sphex. (Cf. "The Hunting Wasps": chapters 4 to 10 et
passim.--Translator's Note.) The outer envelope, consisting of pure
silk, is thin, flexible and offers little resistance. It is closely
superimposed upon the inner envelope and is easily separated from it
everywhere, except at the anal end, where it adheres to the second
envelope. The adhesion of the two wrappers at one end and the
non-adhesion at the other are the cause of the differences which the
tweezers reveal when pinching the two ends of the cocoon.

The inner envelope is firm, elastic, rigid and, to a certain point,
brittle. I do not hesitate to look upon it as consisting of a silken
tissue which the larva, towards the end of its task, has steeped
thoroughly in a sort of varnish prepared not by the silk-glands but by
the stomach. The cocoons of the Sphex have already shown us a similar
varnish. This product of the chylific ventricle is chestnut-brown. It is
this which, saturating the thickness of the tissue, effaces the bright
red of the beginning and replaces it by a brown tint. It is this again
which, disgorged more profusely at the lower end of the cocoon, glues
the two wrappers together at that point.

The perfect insect is hatched at the beginning of July. The emergence
takes place without any violent effraction, without any ragged rents. A
clean, circular fissure appears at some distance from the top; and the
cephalic end is detached all of a piece, as a loose lid might be. It is
as though the recluse had only to raise a cover by butting it with her
head, so exact is the line of division, at least as regards the inner
envelope, the stronger and more important of the two. As for the outer
wrapper, its lack of resistance enables it to yield without difficulty
when the other gives way.

I cannot quite make out by what knack the Wasp contrives to detach the
cap of the inner shell with such accuracy. Is it the art practised by
the tailor when cutting his stuff, with mandibles taking the place of
scissors? I hardly venture to admit as much: the tissue is so tough and
the circle of division so precise. The mandibles are not sharp enough to
cut without leaving a ragged edge; and then what geometrical certainty
they would need for an operation so perfect that it might well have been
performed with the compasses!

I suspect therefore that the Scolia first fashions the outer sac in
accordance with the usual method, that is, by distributing the silk
uniformly, without any special preparation of one part of the wall more
than of another, and that it afterwards changes its method of weaving in
order to attend to the main work, the inner shell. In this it
apparently imitates the Bembex (Cf. "The Hunting Wasps": chapters 14 to
16.--Translator's Note.), which weaves a sort of eel-trap, whose ample
mesh allows it to gather grains of sand outside and encrust them one
by one in the silky network, and completes the performance with a cap
fitting the entrance to the trap. This provides a circular line of least
resistance, along which the casket breaks open afterwards. If the Scolia
really works in the same manner, everything is explained: the eel-trap,
while still open, enables it to soak with varnish both the inside and
the outside of the inner shell, which has to acquire the consistency
of parchment; lastly, the cap which completes and closes the structure
leaves for the future a circular line capable of splitting easily and
neatly.

This is enough on the subject of the Scolia-grub. Let us go back to
its provender, of whose remarkable structure we as yet know nothing. In
order that it may be consumed with the delicate anatomical discretion
imposed by the necessity of having fresh food to the last, the
Cetonia-grub must be plunged into a state of absolute immobility: any
twitchings on its part--as the experiments which I have undertaken go
to prove--would discourage our nibbling larva and impede the work of
carving, which has to be effected with so much circumspection. It is not
enough for the victim to be unable to move from place to place beneath
the soil: in addition to this, the contractible power in its sturdy
muscular organism must be suppressed.

In its normal state, this larva, at the very least disturbance, curls
itself up, almost as the Hedgehog does; and the two halves of the
ventral surface are laid one against the other. You are quite surprised
at the strength which the creature displays in keeping itself thus
contracted. If you try to unroll it, your fingers encounter a resistance
far greater than the size of the animal would have caused you to
suspect. To overcome the resistance of this sort of spring coiled upon
itself, you have to force it, so much so that you are afraid, if you
persist, of seeing the indomitable spiral suddenly burst and shoot forth
its entrails.

A similar muscular energy is found in the larvae of the Oryctes (Also
known as the Rhinoceros Beetle.--Translator's Note.), the Anoxia (A
Beetle akin to the Cockchafer.--Translator's Note.), the Cockchafer.
Weighed down by a heavy belly and living underground, where they feed
either on leaf-mould or on roots, these larvae all possess the vigorous
constitution needed to drag their corpulence through a resisting medium.
All of them also roll themselves into a hook which is not straightened
without an effort.

Now what would become of the egg and the new-born grub of the Scoliae,
fixed under the belly, at the centre of the Cetonia's spiral, or inside
the hook of the Oryctes or the Anoxia? They would be crushed between the
jaws of the living vice. It is essential that the arc should slacken and
the hook unbend, without the least possibility of their returning to
a state of tension. Indeed, the well-being of the Scoliae demands
something more: those powerful bodies must not retain even the power to
quiver, lest they derange a method of feeding which has to be conducted
with the greatest caution.

The Cetonia-grub to which the Two-banded Scolia's egg is fastened
fulfils the required conditions admirably. It is lying on its back, in
the midst of the mould, with its belly fully extended. Long accustomed
though I be to this spectacle of victims paralysed by the sting of
the Hunting Wasp, I cannot suppress my astonishment at the profound
immobility of the prey before my eyes. In the other victims with
flexible skins, Caterpillars, Crickets, Mantes, Ephippigers, I perceived
at least some pulsations of the abdomen, a few feeble contortions under
the stimulus of a needle. There is nothing of the sort here, nothing but
absolute inertia, except in the head, where I see, from time to time,
the mouth-parts open and close, the palpi give a tremor, the short
antennae sway to and fro. A prick with the point of a needle causes no
contraction, no matter what the spot pricked. Though I stab it through
and through, the creature does not stir, be it ever so little. A corpse
is not more inert. Never, since my remotest investigations, have I
witnessed so profound a paralysis. I have seen many wonders due to the
surgical talent of the Wasp; but to-day's marvel surpasses them all.

I am doubly surprised when I consider the unfavourable conditions under
which the Scolia operates. The other paralysers work in the open air, in
the full light of day. There is nothing to hinder them. They enjoy
full liberty of action in seizing the prey, holding it in position and
sacrificing it; they are able to see the victim and to parry its means
of defence, to avoid its spears, its pincers. The spot or spots to be
attained are within their reach; they drive the dagger in without let or
hindrance.

What difficulties, on the other hand, await the Scolia! She hunts
underground, in the blackest darkness. Her movements are laboured and
uncertain, owing to the mould, which is continually giving way all
round her; she cannot keep her eyes on the terrible mandibles, which
are capable of cutting her body in two with a single bite. Moreover,
the Cetonia-grub, perceiving that the enemy is approaching, assumes
its defensive posture, rolls itself up and makes a shield for its only
vulnerable part, the ventral surface, with its convex back. No,
it cannot be an easy operation to subdue the powerful larva in its
underground retreat and to stab with the precision which immediate
paralysis requires.

We wish that we might witness the struggle between the two adversaries
and see at first hand what happens, but we cannot hope to succeed.
It all takes place in the mysterious darkness of the soil; in broad
daylight, the attack would not be delivered, for the victim must remain
where it is and then and there receive the egg, which is unable to
thrive and develop except under the warm cover of vegetable mould. If
direct observation is impracticable, we can at least foresee the main
outlines of the drama by allowing ourselves to be guided by the warlike
manoeuvres of other burrowers.

I picture things thus: digging and rummaging through the heap of mould,
guided perhaps by that singular sensibility of the antennae which
enables the Hairy Ammophila to discover the Grey Worm (The caterpillar
of the Turnip Moth. Cf. "The Hunting Wasps": chapters 18 to
20.--Translator's Note.) underground, the Scolia ends by finding a
Cetonia-larva, a good plump one, in the pink of condition, having
reached its full growth, just what the grub which is to feed on it
requires. Forthwith, the assaulted victim, contracting desperately,
rolls itself into a ball. The other seizes it by the skin of the neck.
To unroll it is impossible to the insect, for I myself have some trouble
in doing so. One single point is accessible to the sting: the under part
of the head, or rather of the first segments, which are placed outside
the coil, so that the grub's hard cranium makes a rampart for the hinder
extremity, which is less well defended. Here the Wasp's sting enters and
here only can it enter, within a narrowly circumscribed area. One stab
only of the lancet is given at this point, one only because there is no
room for more; and this is enough: the larva is absolutely paralysed.

The nervous functions are abolished instantly; the muscular contractions
cease; and the animal uncoils like a broken spring. Henceforth
motionless, it lies on its back, its ventral surface fully exposed from
end to end. On the median line of this surface, towards the rear, near
the brown patch due to the alimentary broth contained in the intestine,
the Scolia lays her egg and without more ado, leaves everything lying on
the actual spot where the murder was committed, in order to go in search
of another victim.

This is how the deed must be done: the results prove it emphatically.
But then the Cetonia-grub must possess a very exceptional structure in
its nervous organization. The larva's violent contraction leaves but a
single point of attack open to the sting, the under part of the neck,
which is doubtless uncovered when the victim tries to defend itself
with its mandibles; and yet a stab in this one point produces the most
thorough paralysis that I have ever seen. It is the general rule that
larvae possess a centre of innervation for each segment. This is so
in particular with the Grey Worm, the sacrificial victim of the Hairy
Ammophila. The Wasp is acquainted with this anatomical secret: she stabs
the caterpillar again and again, from end to end, segment by segment,
ganglion by ganglion. With such an organization the Cetonia-grub,
unconquerably coiled upon itself would defy the paralyser's surgical
skill.

If the first ganglion were wounded, the others would remain uninjured;
and the powerful body, actuated by these last, would lose none of its
powers of contraction. Woe then to the egg, to the young grub held fast
in its embrace! And how insurmountable would be the difficulties if the
Scolia, working in the profound darkness amid the crumbling soil and
confronted by a terrible pair of mandibles, had to stab each segment
in turn with her sting, with the certainty of method displayed by the
Ammophila! The delicate operation is possible in the open air, where
nothing stands in the way, in broad daylight, where the sight guides the
scalpel, and with a patient which can always be released if it becomes
dangerous. But in the dark, underground, amidst the ruins of a ceiling
which crumbles in consequence of the conflict and at close quarters with
an opponent greatly her superior in strength, how is the Scolia to guide
her sting with the accuracy that is essential if the stabs are to be
repeated?

So profound a paralysis; the difficulty of vivisection underground;
the desperate coiling of the victim: all these things tell me that the
Cetonia-grub, as regards its nervous system, must possess a structure
peculiar to itself. The whole of the ganglia must be concentrated in a
limited area in the first segments, almost under the neck. I see this
as clearly as though it had been revealed to me by a post-mortem
dissection.

Never was anatomical forecast more fully confirmed by direct
examination. After forty-eight hours in benzine, which dissolves the fat
and renders the nervous system more plainly visible, the Cetonia-grub is
subjected to dissection. Those of my readers who are familiar with these
investigations will understand my delight. What a clever school is the
Scolia's! It is just as I thought! Admirable! The thoracic and abdominal
ganglia are gathered into a single nervous mass, situated within the
quadrilateral bounded by the four hinder legs, which legs are very near
the head. It is a tiny, dull-white cylinder, about three millimetres
long by half a millimetre wide. (.117 x.019 inch.--Translator's Note.)
This is the organ which the Scolia's sting must attack in order to
secure the paralysis of the whole body, excepting the head, which is
provided with special ganglia. From it run numbers of filaments which
actuate the feet and the powerful muscular layer which is the creature's
essential motor organ. When examined merely through the pocket-lens,
this cylinder appears to be slightly furrowed transversely, a proof of
its complex structure. Under the microscope, it is seen to be formed by
the close juxtaposition, the welding, end to end, of the ganglia, which
can be distinguished one from the other by a slight intermediate groove.
The bulkiest are the first, the fourth and the tenth, or last; these are
all very nearly of equal size. The rest are barely half or even a third
as large as those mentioned.

The Interrupted Scolia experiences the same hunting and surgical
difficulties when she attacks, in the crumbling, sandy soil, the
larvae of the Shaggy Anoxia or of the Morning Anoxia, according to the
district; and these difficulties, if they are to be overcome, demand in
the victim a concentrated nervous system, like the Cetonia's. Such is my
logical conviction before making my examination; such also is the result
of direct observation. When subjected to the scalpel, the larva of the
Morning Anoxia shows me its centres of innervation for the thorax and
the abdomen, gathered into a short cylinder, which, placed very far
forward, almost immediately after the head, does not run back beyond the
level of the second pair of legs. The vulnerable point is thus easily
accessible to the sting, despite the creature's posture of defence, in
which it contracts and coils up. In this cylinder I recognize eleven
ganglia, one more than in the Cetonia. The first three, or thoracic,
ganglia are plainly distinguishable from one another, although they are
set very close together; the rest are all in contact. The largest are
the three thoracic ganglia and the eleventh.

After ascertaining these facts, I remembered Swammerdam's investigations
into the grub of the Monoceros, our Oryctes nasicornis. (Jan Swammerdam
(1637-1680), the Dutch naturalist and anatomist.--Translator's Note.) I
chanced to possess an abridgement of the "Biblia naturae," the masterly
work of the father of insect anatomy. I consulted the venerable volume.
It informed me that the learned Dutchman had been struck, long before
I was, by an anatomical peculiarity similar to that which the larvae
of the Cetoniae and Anoxiae had shown me in their nerve-centres. Having
observed in the Silk-worm a nervous system formed of ganglia distinct
one from the other, he was quite surprised to find that, in the grub
of the Oryctes, the same system was concentrated into a short chain of
ganglia in juxtaposition. His was the surprise of the anatomist who,
studying the organ qua organ, sees for the first time an unusual
conformation. Mine was of a different nature: I was amazed to see the
precision with which the paralysis of the victim sacrificed by the
Scolia, a paralysis so profound in spite of the difficulties of an
underground operation, had guided my forecast as to structure when,
anticipating the dissection, I declared in favour of an exceptional
concentration of the nervous system. Physiology perceived what anatomy
had not yet revealed, at all events to my eyes, for since then,
on dipping into my books, I have learnt that these anatomical
peculiarities, which were then so new to me, are now within the domain
of current science. We know that, in the Scarabaeidae, both the larva
and the perfect insect are endowed with a concentrated nervous system.

The Garden Scolia attacks Oryctes nasicornis; the Two-banded Scolia
the Cetonia; the Interrupted Scolia the Anoxia. All three operate below
ground, under the most unfavourable conditions; and all three have for
their victim a larva of one of the Scarabaeidae, which, thanks to the
exceptional arrangement of its nerve-centres, lends itself, alone of all
larvae, to the Wasp's successful enterprises. In the presence of
this underground game, so greatly varied in size and shape and yet
so judiciously selected to facilitate paralysis, I do not hesitate to
generalize and I accept, as the ration of the other Scoliae, larvae of
Lamellicorns whose species will be determined by future observation.
Perhaps one of them will be found to give chase to the terrible enemy of
my crops, the voracious White Worm, the grub of the Cockchafer; perhaps
the Hemorrhoidal Scolia, rivalling in size the Garden Scolia and like
her, no doubt, requiring a copious diet, will be entered in the insects'
"Who's Who" as the destroyer of the Pine-chafer, that magnificent
Beetle, flecked with white upon a black or brown ground, who of an
evening, during the summer solstice, browses on the foliage of the
fir-trees. Though unable to speak with certainty or precision, I am
inclined to look upon these devourers of Scarabaeus-grubs as valiant
agricultural auxiliaries.

The Cetonia-larva has figured hitherto only in its quality of a
paralysed victim. We will now consider it in its normal state. With its
convex back and its almost flat ventral surface, the creature is like a
semi-cylinder in shape, fuller in the hinder portion. On the back, each
of the segments, except the last, or anal, segment, puckers into three
thick pads, bristling with stiff, tawny hairs. The anal segment, much
wider than the rest, is rounded at the end and coloured a deep brown by
the contents of the intestine, which show through the translucent skin;
it bristles with hairs like the other segments, but is level, without
pads. On the ventral surface, the segments have no creases; and the
hairs, though abundant, are rather less so than on the back. The legs,
which are quite well-formed, are short and feeble in comparison with
the animal's size. The head has a strong, horny cap for a cranium. The
mandibles are powerful, with bevelled tips and three or four teeth on
the edge of the bevel.

Its mode of locomotion marks it as an idiosyncratic, exceptional,
fantastic creature, having no fellow, that I know of, in the insect
world. Though endowed with legs--a trifle short, it is true, but after
all as good as those of a host of other larvae--it never uses them for
walking. It progresses on its back, always on its back, never otherwise.
By means of wriggling movements and the purchase afforded by the dorsal
bristles, it makes its way belly upwards, with its legs kicking the
empty air. The spectator to whom these topsy-turvy gymnastics are a
novelty thinks at first that the creature must have had a fright of some
sort and that it is struggling as best it can in the face of danger.
He puts it back on its belly; he lays it on its side. Nothing is of any
use; it obstinately turns over and resumes its dorsal progress. That is
its manner of travelling over a flat surface; it has no other.

This reversal of the usual mode of walking is so peculiar to the
Cetonia-larva that it is enough in itself to reveal the grub's identity
to the least expert eyes. Dig into the vegetable mould formed by the
decayed wood in the hollow trunks of old willow-trees, search at the
foot of rotten stumps or in heaps of compost; and, if you come upon a
plumpish grub moving along on its back, there is no room for doubt: your
discovery is a Cetonia-larva.

This topsy-turvy progress is fairly swift and is not less in speed to
that of an equally fat grub travelling on its legs. It would even be
greater on a polished surface, where walking on foot is hampered by
incessant slips, whereas the numerous hairs of the dorsal pads find
the necessary support by multiplying the points of contact. On polished
wood, on a sheet of paper and even on a strip of glass, I see my grubs
moving from point to point with the same ease as on a surface of garden
mould. In the space of one minute, on the wood of my table, they cover a
distance of eight inches. The pace is no swifter on a horizontal bed of
sifted mould. A strip of glass reduces the distance covered by one
half. The slippery surface only half paralyses this strange method of
locomotion.

We will now place side by side with the Cetonia-grub the larva of the
Morning Anoxia, the prey of the Interrupted Scolia. It is very like the
larva of the Common Cockchafer. It is a fat, pot-bellied grub, with a
thick, red cap on its head and armed with strong, black mandibles, which
are powerful implements for digging and cutting through roots. The legs
are sturdy and end in a hooked nail. The creature has a long, heavy,
brown paunch. When placed on the table, it lies on its side; it
struggles without being able to advance or even to remain on its belly
or back. In its usual posture it is curled up into a narrow hook. I have
never seen it straighten itself completely; the bulky abdomen prevents
it. When placed on a surface of moist sand, the ventripotent creature is
no better able to shift its position: curved into a fish-hook, it lies
on its side.

To dig into the earth and bury itself, it uses the fore-edge of its
head, a sort of weeding-hoe with the two mandibles for points. The
legs take part in this work, but far less effectually. In this way it
contrives to dig itself a shallow pit. Then, bracing itself against the
wall of the pit, with the aid of wriggling movements which are favoured
by the short, stiff hairs bristling all over its body, the grub changes
its position and plunges into the sand, but still with difficulty.

Apart from a few details, which are of no importance here, we may repeat
this sketch of the Anoxia-grub and we shall have, if the size be at
least quadrupled, a picture of the larva of Oryctes nasicornis, the
monstrous prey of the Garden Scolia. Its general appearance is the same:
there is the same exaggeration of the belly; the same hook-like curve;
the same incapacity for standing on its legs. And as much may be said
of the larva of Scarabaeus pentodon, a fellow-boarder of the Oryctes and
the Cetonia.



CHAPTER 5. THE PROBLEM OF THE SCOLIAE.

Now that all the facts have been set forth, it is time to collate them.
We already know that the Beetle-hunters, the Cerceres (Cf. "The Hunting
Wasps": chapters 1 to 3.--Translator's Note.), prey exclusively on the
Weevils and the Buprestes, that is, on the families whose nervous system
presents a degree of concentration which may be compared with that of
the Scolia's victims. Those predatory insects, working in the open
air, are exempt from the difficulties which their emulators, working
underground, have to overcome. Their movements are free and are directed
by the sense of sight; but their surgery is confronted in another
respect with a most arduous problem.

The victim, a Beetle, is covered at all points with a suit of armour
which the sting is unable to penetrate. The joints alone will allow the
poisoned lancet to pass. Those of the legs do not in any way comply with
the conditions imposed: the result of stinging them would be merely a
partial disorder which far from subduing the insect, would render it
more dangerous by irritating it yet further. A sting in the joint of the
neck is not admissible: it would injure the cervical ganglia and lead
to death, followed by putrefaction. There remains only the joint between
the corselet and the abdomen.

The sting, in entering here, has to abolish all movement with a single
stab, for any movement would imperil the rearing of the larva. The
success of the paralysis, therefore, demands that the motor ganglia,
at least the three thoracic ganglia, shall be packed in close contact
opposite this point. This determines the selection of Weevils and
Buprestes, both of which are so strongly armoured.

But where the prey has only a soft skin, incapable of stopping the
sting, the concentrated nervous system is no longer necessary, for
the operator, versed in the anatomical secrets of her victim, knows to
perfection where the centres of innervation lie; and she wounds them
one after another, if need be from the first to the last. Thus do the
Ammophilae go to work when dealing with their caterpillars and the
Sphex-wasps when dealing with their Locusts, Ephippigers and Crickets.

With the Scoliae we come once again to a soft prey, with a skin
penetrable by the sting no matter where it be attacked. Will the tactics
of the caterpillar-hunters, who stab and stab again, be repeated here?
No, for the difficulty of movement under ground prohibits so complicated
an operation. Only the tactics of the paralysers of armour-clad insects
are practicable now, for, since there is but one thrust of the dagger,
the feat of surgery is reduced to its simplest terms, a necessary
consequence of the difficulties of an underground operation. The
Scoliae, then, whose destiny it is to hunt and paralyse under the soil
the victuals for their family, require a prey made highly vulnerable
by the close assemblage of the nerve-centres, as are the Weevils and
Buprestes of the Cerceres; and this is why it has fallen to their lot to
share among them the larvae of the Scarabaeidae.

Before they obtained their allotted portion, so closely restricted and
so judiciously selected; before they discovered the precise and almost
mathematical point at which the sting must enter to produce a sudden
and a lasting immobility; before they learnt how to consume, without
incurring the risk of putrefaction, so corpulent a prey: in brief,
before they combined these three conditions of success, what did the
Scoliae do?

The Darwinian school will reply that they were hesitating, essaying,
experimenting. A long series of blind gropings eventually hit upon the
most favourable combination, a combination henceforth to be perpetuated
by hereditary transmission. The skilful co-ordination between the end
and the means was originally the result of an accident.

Chance! A convenient refuge! I shrug my shoulders when I hear it invoked
to explain the genesis of an instinct so complex as that of the Scoliae.
In the beginning, you say, the creature gropes and feels its way; there
is nothing settled about its preferences. To feed its carnivorous larvae
it levies tribute on every species of game which is not too much for
the huntress' power or the nurseling's appetite; its descendants try
now this, now that, now something else, at random, until the accumulated
centuries lead to the selection which best suits the race. Then habit
grows fixed and becomes instinct.

Very well. Let us agree that the Scolia of antiquity sought a different
prey from that adopted by the modern huntress. If the family throve upon
a diet now discontinued, we fail to see that the descendants had any
reason to change it: animals have not the gastronomic fancies of an
epicure whom satiety makes difficult to please. Because the race did
well upon this fare, it became habitual; and instinct became differently
fixed from what it is to-day. If, on the other hand, the original food
was unsuitable, the existence of the family was jeopardized; and any
attempt at future improvement became impossible, because an unhappily
inspired mother would leave no heirs.

To escape falling into this twofold trap, the theorists will reply that
the Scoliae are descended from a precursor, an indeterminate creature,
of changeable habits and changing form, modifying itself in accordance
with its environment and with the regional and climatic conditions and
branching out into races each of which has become a species with the
attributes which distinguish it to-day. The precursor is the deus
ex machina of evolution. When the difficulty becomes altogether
too importunate, quick, a precursor, to fill up the gaps, quick, an
imaginary creature, the nebulous plaything of the mind! This is seeking
to lighten the darkness with a still deeper obscurity; to illumine the
day by piling cloud upon cloud. Precursors are easier to find than sound
arguments. Nevertheless, let us put the precursor of the Scoliae to the
test.

What did she do? Being capable of everything, she did a bit of
everything. Among its descendants were innovators who developed a taste
for tunnelling in sand and vegetable mould. There they encountered the
larvae of the Cetonia, the Oryctes, the Anoxia, succulent morsels on
which to rear their families. By degrees the indeterminate Wasp adopted
the sturdy proportions demanded by underground labour. By degrees she
learnt to stab her plump neighbours in scientific fashion; by degrees
she acquired the difficult art of consuming her prey without killing it;
at length, by degrees, aided by the richness of her diet, she became the
powerful Scolia with whom we are familiar. Having reached this point,
the species assumes a permanent form, as does its instinct.

Here we have a multiplicity of stages, all of the slowest, all of the
most incredible nature, whereas the Wasp cannot found a race except on
the express condition of complete success from the first attempt. We
will not insist further upon the insurmountable objection; we will admit
that, amid so many unfavourable chances, a few favoured individuals
survive, becoming more and more numerous from one generation to the
next, in proportion as the dangerous art of rearing the young is
perfected. Slight variations in one and the same direction form a
definite whole; and at long last the ancient precursor has become the
Scolia of our own times.

By the aid of a vague phraseology which juggles with the secret of
the centuries and the unknown things of life, it is easy to build up a
theory in which our mental sloth delights, after being discouraged by
difficult researches whose final result is doubt rather than positive
statement. But if, so far from being satisfied with hazy generalities
and adopting as current coin the terms consecrated by fashion, we have
the perseverance to explore the truth as far as lies in our power, the
aspect of things will undergo a great change and we shall discover that
they are far less simple than our overprecipitate views declared them
to be. Generalization is certainly a most valuable instrument: science
indeed exists only by virtue of it. Let us none the less beware
of generalizations which are not based upon very firm and manifold
foundations.

When these foundations are lacking, the child is the great generalizer.
For him, the feathered world consists merely of birds; the race of
reptiles merely of snakes, the only difference being that some are big
and some are little. Knowing nothing, he generalizes in the highest
degree; he simplifies, in his inability to perceive the complex. Later
he will learn that the Sparrow is not the Bullfinch, that the Linnet is
not the Greenfinch; he will particularize and to a greater degree each
day, as his faculty of observation becomes more fully trained. In the
beginning he saw nothing but resemblances; he now sees differences, but
still not plainly enough to avoid incongruous comparisons.

In his adult years he will almost to a certainty commit zoological
blunders similar to those which my gardener retails to me. Favier, an
old soldier, has never opened a book, for the best of reasons. He barely
knows how to cipher: arithmetic rather than reading is forced upon us by
the brutalities of life. Having followed the flag over three-quarters of
the globe, he has an open mind and a memory crammed with reminiscences,
which does not prevent him, when we chat about animals, from making the
most crazy assertions. For him the Bat is a Rat that has grown wings;
the Cuckoo is a Sparrow-hawk retired from business; the Slug is a Snail
who has lost his shell with the advance of years; the Nightjar (Known
also as the Goatsucker, because of the mistaken belief that
the bird sucks the milk of Goats, and, in America, as the
Whippoorwill.--Translator's Note.), the Chaoucho-grapaou, as he calls
her, is an elderly Toad, who, becoming enamoured of milk-food, has grown
feathers, so that she may enter the byres and milk the Goats. It is
impossible to drive these fantastic ideas out of his head. Favier
himself, as will be seen, is an evolutionist after his own fashion,
an evolutionist of a very daring type. In accounting for the origin of
animals nothing gives him pause. He has a reply to everything: "this"
comes from "that." If you ask him why, he answers:

"Look at the resemblance!"

Shall we reproach him with these insanities, when we hear another,
misled by the Monkey's build, acclaim the Pithecanthropus as man's
precursor? Shall we reject the metamorphosis of the Chaoucho-grapaou,
when people tell us in all seriousness that, in the present stage of
scientific knowledge, it is absolutely proved that man is descended from
some rough-hewn Ape? Of the two transformations, Favier's strikes me as
the more credible. A painter of my acquaintance, a brother of the great
composer Felicien David (Felicien Cesar David (1810-1876). His chief
work was the choral symphony "Le Desert":--Translator's Note.), favoured
me one day with his reflections on the human structure:

"Ve, moun bel ami," he said. "Ve, l'home a lou dintre d'un por et lou
defero d'uno mounino." "See, my dear friend, see: man has the inside of
a pig and the outside of a monkey."

I recommend the painter's aphorism to those who might like to discover
man's origin in the Hog when the Ape has gone out of fashion. According
to David, descent is proved by internal resemblances:

"L'home a lou dintre d'un por."

The inventory of precursory types sees nothing but organic resemblances
and disdains the differences of aptitude. By consulting only the bones,
the vertebrae, the hair, the nervures of the wings, the joints of the
antennae, the imagination may build up any sort of genealogical tree
that will fit with our theories of classification, for, when all is
said, the animal, in its widest generalization, is represented by a
digestive tube. With this common factor, the way lies open to every kind
of error. A machine is judged not by this or that train of wheels, but
by the nature of the work accomplished. The monumental roasting-jack of
a waggoners' inn and a Breguet chronometer both have trains of cogwheels
geared in almost a similar fashion. (Louis Breguet (1803-1883), a famous
Parisian watchmaker and physicist.--Translator's Note.) Are we to
class the two mechanisms together? Shall we forget that the one turns a
shoulder of mutton before the hearth, while the other divides time into
seconds?

In the same way, the organic scaffolding is dominated from on high by
the aptitudes of the animal, especially that superior characteristic,
the psychical aptitudes. That the Chimpanzee and the hideous Gorilla
possess close resemblances of structure to our own is obvious. But
let us for a moment consider their aptitudes. What differences, what a
dividing gulf! Without exalting ourselves as high as the famous reed of
which Pascal speaks, that reed which, in its weakness, by the mere
fact that it knows itself to be crushed, is superior to the world that
crushes it, we may at least ask to be shown, somewhere, an animal making
an implement, which will multiply its skill and its strength, or
taking possession of fire, the primordial element of progress. (Blaise
Pascal(1623-1662). The allusion is to a passage in the philosopher's
"Pensees." Pascal describes man as a reed, the weakest thing in nature,
but "a thinking reed."--Translator's Note.) Master of implements and
of fire! These two aptitudes, simple though they be, characterize man
better than the number of his vertebrae and his molars.

You tell us that man, at first a hairy brute, walking on all fours,
has risen on his hind-legs and shed his fur; and you complacently
demonstrate how the elimination of the hairy pelt was effected. Instead
of bolstering up a theory with a handful of fluff gained or lost, it
would perhaps be better to settle how the original brute became the
possessor of implements and fire. Aptitudes are more important than
hair; and you neglect them because it is there that the insurmountable
difficulty really resides. See how the great master of evolution
hesitates and stammers when he tries, by fair means or foul, to fit
instinct into the mould of his formulae. It is not so easy to handle as
the colour of the pelt, the length of the tail, the ear that droops or
stands erect. Yes, our master well knows that this is where the shoe
pinches! Instinct escapes him and brings his theory crumbling to the
ground.

Let us return to what the Scoliae teach us on this question, which
incidentally touches on our own origin. In conformity with the Darwinian
ideas, we have accepted an unknown precursor, who by dint of repeated
experiment, adopted as the victuals to be hoarded the larvae of the
Scarabaeidae. This precursor, modified by varying circumstances, is
supposed to have subdivided herself into ramifications, one of which,
digging into vegetable mould and preferring the Cetonia to any other
game inhabiting the same heap, became the Two-banded Scolia; another,
also addicted to exploring the soil, but selecting the Oryctes, left as
its descendant the Garden Scolia; and a third, establishing itself
in sandy ground, where it found the Anoxia, was the ancestress of the
Interrupted Scolia. To these three ramifications we must beyond a doubt
add others which complete the series of the Scolia. As their habits are
known to me only by analogy, I confine myself to mentioning them.

The three species at least, therefore, with which I am familiar would
appear to be derived from a common precursor. To traverse the distance
from the starting-point to the goal, all three have had to contend with
difficulties, which are extremely grave if considered one by one and are
aggravated even more by this circumstance, that the overcoming of one
would lead to nothing unless the others were surmounted as successfully.
Success, then, is contingent upon a series of conditions, each one of
which offers almost no chance of victory, so that the fulfilment of them
all becomes a mathematical absurdity if we are to invoke accident alone.

And, in the first place, how was it that the Scolia of antiquity, having
to provide rations for her carnivorous family, adopted for her prey only
those larvae which, owing to the concentration of their nervous systems,
form so remarkable and so rare an exception in the insect order? What
chance would hazard offer her of obtaining this prey, the most suitable
of all because the most vulnerable? The chance represented by unity
compared with the indefinite number of entomological species. The odds
are as one to immensity.

Let us continue. The larva of the Scarabaeid is snapped up underground,
for the first time. The victim protests, defends itself after its
fashion, coils itself up and presents to the sting on every side a
surface on which a wound entails no serious danger. And yet the Wasp, an
absolute novice, has to select, for the thrust of its poisoned weapon,
one single point, narrowly restricted and hidden in the folds of the
larva's body. If she miscalculates, she may be killed: the larva,
irritated by the smarting puncture, is strong enough to disembowel her
with the tusks of its mandibles. If she escapes the danger, she will
nevertheless perish without leaving any offspring, since the necessary
provisions will be lacking. Salvation for herself and her race depends
on this: whether at the first thrust she is able to reach the little
nervous plexus which measures barely one-fiftieth of an inch in width.
What chance has she of plunging her lancet into it, if there is nothing
to guide her? The chance represented by unity compared with the number
of points composing the victim's body. The odds are as one against
immensity.

Let us proceed still further. The sting has reached the mark; the fat
grub is deprived of movement. At what spots should the egg now be laid?
In front, behind, on the sides, the back or the belly? The choice is
not a matter of indifference. The young grub will pierce the skin of
its provender at the very spot on which the egg was fixed; and, once an
opening is made, it will go ahead without hesitation. If this point of
attack is ill-chosen, the nurseling runs the risk of presently finding
under its mandibles some essential organ, which should have been
respected until the end in order to keep the victuals fresh. Remember
how difficult it is to complete the rearing when the tiny larva is moved
from the place chosen by the mother. The game promptly becomes putrid
and the Scolia dies.

It is impossible for me to state the precise motives which lead to the
adoption of the spot on which the egg is laid; I can perceive general
reasons, but the details escape me, as I am not well enough versed in
the more delicate questions of anatomy and entomological physiology.
What I do know with absolute certainty is that the same spot is
invariably chosen for laying the egg. With not a single exception, on
all the victims extracted from the heap of garden mould--and they are
numerous--the egg is fixed behind the ventral surface, on the verge of
the brown patch formed by the contents of the digestive system.

If there be nothing to guide her, what chance has the mother of gluing
her egg to this point, which is always the same because it is that most
favourable to successful rearing? A very small point, represented by
the ratio of two or three square millimetres (About 1/100 square
inch.--Translator's Note.) to the entire surface of the victim's body.

Is this all? Not yet. The grub is hatched; it pierces the belly of the
Cetonia-larva at the requisite point; it plunges its long neck into the
entrails, ransacking them and filling itself to repletion. If it bite at
random, if it have no other guide in the selection of tit-bits than the
preference of the moment and the violence of an imperious appetite, it
will infallibly incur the danger of being poisoned by putrid food, for
the victim, if wounded in those organs which preserve a remnant of life
in it, will die for good and all at the first mouthfuls.

The ample joint must be consumed with prudent skill: this part must be
eaten before that and, after that, some other portion, always according
to method, until the time approaches for the last bites. This marks the
end of life for the Cetonia, but it also marks the end of the Scolia's
feasting. If the grub be a novice in the art of eating, if no special
instinct guide its mandibles in the belly of the prey, what chance has
it of completing its perilous meal? As much as a starving Wolf
would have of daintily dissecting his Sheep, when he tears at her
gluttonously, rends her into shreds and gulps them down.

These four conditions of success, with chance so near to zero in each
case, must all be realized together, or the grub will never be reared.
The Scolia may have captured a larva with close-packed nerve-centres,
a Cetonia-grub, for instance; but this will go for nothing unless she
direct her sting towards the only vulnerable point. She may know the
whole secret of the art of stabbing her victim, but this means nothing
if she does not know where to fasten her egg. The suitable spot may be
found, but all the foregoing will be useless if the grub be not versed
in the method to be followed in devouring its prey while keeping it
alive. It is all or nothing.

Who would venture to calculate the final chance on which the future of
the Scolia, or of her precursor, is based, that complex chance whose
factors are four infinitely improbable occurrences, one might almost
say four impossibilities? And such a conjunction is supposed to be a
fortuitous result, to which the present instinct is due! Come, come!

From another point of view again, the Darwinian theory is at variance
with the Scoliae and their prey. In the heap of garden mould which I
exploited in order to write this record, three kinds of larvae dwell
together, belonging to the Scarabaeid group: the Cetonia, the Oryctes
and Scarabeus pentodon. Their internal structure is very nearly similar;
their food is the same, consisting of decomposing vegetable matter;
their habits are identical: they live underground in tunnels which
are frequently renewed; they make a rough egg-shaped cocoon of earthy
materials. Environment, diet, industry and internal structure are all
similar; and yet one of these three larvae, the Cetonia's, reveals a
most singular dissimilarity from its fellow-trenchermen: alone among
the Scarabaeidae and, more than that, alone in all the immense order of
insects, it walks upon its back.

If the differences were a matter of a few petty structural details,
falling within the finical department of the classifier, we might pass
them over without hesitation; but a creature that turns itself upside
down in order to walk with its belly in the air and never adopts any
other method of locomotion, though it possesses legs and good legs at
that, assuredly deserves examination. How did the animal acquire its
fantastic mode of progress and why does it think fit to walk in a
fashion the exact contrary of that adopted by other beasts?

To these questions the science now in fashion always has a reply
ready: adaptation to environment. The Cetonia-larva lives in crumbling
galleries which it bores in the depths of the soil. Like the sweep who
obtains a purchase with his back, loins and knees to hoist himself up
the narrow passage of a chimney, it gathers itself up, applies the tip
of its belly to one wall of its gallery and its sturdy back to another;
and the combined effort of these two levers results in moving it
forward. The legs, which are used very little, indeed hardly at all,
waste away and tend to disappear, as does any organ which is left
unemployed; the back, on the other hand, the principal motive agent,
grows stronger, is furrowed with powerful folds and bristles with
grappling-hooks or hairs; and gradually, by adaptation to its
environment, the creature loses the art of walking, which it does not
practise, and replaces it by that of crawling on its back, a form of
progress better suited to underground corridors.

So far so good. But now tell me, if you please, why the larvae of the
Oryctes and the Scarabaeus, living in vegetable mould, the larva of the
Anoxia, dwelling in the sand, and the larva of the Cockchafer in our
cultivated fields have not also acquired the faculty of walking on their
backs? In their galleries they follow the chimney-sweep's methods quite
as cleverly as the Cetonia-grub; to move forward they make valiant use
of their backs without yet having come to ambling with their bellies
in the air. Can they have neglected to accommodate themselves to the
demands of their environment? If evolution and environment cause the
topsy-turvy progress of the one, I have the right, if words have
any meaning whatever, to demand as much of the others, since their
organization is so much alike and their mode of life identical.

I have but little respect for theories which, when confronted with two
similar cases, are unable to interpret the one without contradicting the
other. They make me laugh when they become merely childish. For
example: why has the tiger a coat streaked black and yellow? A matter of
environment, replies one of our evolutionary masters. Ambushed in bamboo
thickets where the golden radiance of the sun is intersected by stripes
of shadow cast by the foliage, the animal, the better to conceal itself,
assumed the colour of its environment. The rays of the sun produced the
tawny yellow of the coat; the stripes of shadow added the black bars.

And there you have it. Any one who refuses to accept the explanation
must be very hard to please. I am one of these difficult persons. If it
were a dinner-table jest, made over the walnuts and the wine, I would
willingly sing ditto; but alas and alack, it is uttered without a
smile, in a solemn and magisterial manner, as the last word in science!
Toussenel, in his day, asked the naturalists an insidious question.
(Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885), the author of a number of learned and
curious works on ornithology.--Translator's Note.) Why, he enquired,
have Ducks a little curly feather on the rump? No one, so far as I know,
had an answer for the teasing cross-examiner: evolution had not been
invented then. In our time the reason why would be forthcoming in a
moment, as lucid and as well-founded as the reason why of the tiger's
coat.

Enough of childish nonsense. The Cetonia-grub walks on its back because
it has always done so. The environment does not make the animal; it is
the animal that is made for the environment. To this simple philosophy,
which is quite antiquated nowadays, I will add another, which Socrates
expressed in these words:

"What I know best is that I know nothing."



CHAPTER 6. THE TACHYTES.

The family of Wasps whose name I inscribe at the head of this chapter
has not hitherto, so far as I know, made much noise in the world. Its
annals are limited to methodical classifications, which make very poor
reading. The happy nations, men say, are those which have no history.
I accept this, but I also admit that it is possible to have a history
without ceasing to be happy. In the conviction that I shall not disturb
its prosperity, I will try to substitute the living, moving insect for
the insect impaled in a cork-bottomed box.

It has been adorned with a learned name, derived from the Greek
Tachytes, meaning rapidity, suddenness, speed. The creature's godfather,
as we see, had a smattering of Greek; its denomination is none the
less unfortunate: intended to instruct us by means of a characteristic
feature, the name leads us astray. Why is speed mentioned in this
connection? Why a label which prepares the mind for an exceptional
velocity and announces a race of peerless coursers? Nimble diggers of
burrows and eager hunters the Tachytes are, to be sure, but they are no
better than a host of rivals. Not the Sphex, nor the Ammophila, nor the
Bembex, nor many another would admit herself beaten in either flying
or running. At the nesting-season, all this tiny world of huntresses is
filled with astounding activity. The quality of a speedy worker being
common to all, none can boast of it to the exclusion of the rest.

Had I had a vote when the Tachytes was christened, I should have
suggested a short, harmonious, well-sounding name, meaning nothing else
than the thing meant. What better, for example, than the term Sphex? The
ear is satisfied and the mind is not corrupted by a prejudice, a
source of error to the beginner. I have not nearly as much liking for
Ammophila, which represents as a lover of the sands an animal whose
establishments call for compact soil. In short, if I had been forced, at
all costs, to concoct a barbarous appellation out of Latin or Greek in
order to recall the creature's leading characteristic, I should have
attempted to say, a passionate lover of the Locust.

Love of the Locust, in the broader sense of the Orthopteron, an
exclusive, intolerant love, handed down from mother to daughter with
a fidelity which the centuries fail to impair, this, yes, this indeed
depicts the Tachytes with greater accuracy than a name smacking of
the race-course. The Englishman has his roast-beef; the German his
sauerkraut; the Russian his caviare; the Neapolitan his macaroni; the
Piedmontese his polenta; the man of Carpentras his tian. The Tachytes
has her Locust. Her national dish is also that of the Sphex, with whom I
boldly associate her. The methodical classifier, who works in cemeteries
and seems to fly the living cities, keeps the two families far removed
from each other because of considerations and attaching to the nervures
of the wings and the joints of the palpi. At the risk of passing for a
heretic, I bring them together at the suggestion of the menu-card.

To my own knowledge, my part of the country possesses five species, one
and all addicted to a diet of Orthoptera. Panzer's Tachytes (T. Panzeri,
VAN DER LIND), girdled with red at the base of the abdomen, must be
pretty rare. I surprise her from time to time working on the hard
roadside banks and the trodden edges of the footpaths. There, to a depth
of an inch at most, she digs her burrows, each isolated from the
rest. Her prey is an adult, medium-sized Acridian (Locust or
Grasshopper.--Translator's Note.), such as the White-banded Sphex
pursues. The captive of the one would not be despised by the other.
Gripped by the antennae, according to the ritual of the Sphex, the
victim is trailed along on foot and laid beside the nest, with the head
pointing towards the opening. The pit, prepared in advance, is closed
for the time being with a tiny flagstone and some bits of gravel, in
order to avoid either the invasion of a passer-by or obstruction by
landslips during the huntress' absence. A like precaution is taken by
the White-banded Sphex. Both observe the same diet and the same customs.

The Tachytes clears the entrance to the home and goes in alone. She
returns, puts out her head and, seizing her prey by the antennae,
warehouses it by dragging backwards. I have repeated, at her expense,
the tricks which I used to play on the Sphex. (For the author's
experiments with the Languedocian, the Yellow-winged and the White-edged
Sphex, cf. "The Hunting Wasps": chapter 11.--Translator's Note.) While
the Tachytes is underground, I move the game away. The insect comes up
again and sees nothing at its door; it comes out and goes to fetch its
Locust, whom it places in position as before. This done, it goes in
again by itself. In its absence I once more pull back the prey. Fresh
emergence of the Wasp, who puts things to rights and persists in going
down again, still by herself, however often I repeat the experiment.
Yet it would be very easy for her to put an end to my teasing: she would
only have to descend straightway with her game, instead of leaving it
for a moment on her doorstep. But, faithful to the usages of her race,
she behaves as her ancestors behaved before her, even though the ancient
custom happen to be unprofitable. Like the Yellow-winged Sphex, whom I
have teased so often during her cellaring-operations, she is a narrow
conservative, learning nothing and forgetting nothing.

Let us leave her to do her work in peace. The Locust disappears
underground and the egg is laid upon the breast of the paralysed insect.
That is all: one carcase for each cell, no more. The entrance is stopped
at last, first with stones, which will prevent the trickling of the
embankment into the chamber; next with sweepings of dust, under which
every vestige of the subterranean house disappears. It is now done:
the Tachytes will come here no more. Other burrows will occupy her,
distributed at the whim of her vagabond humour.

A cell provisioned before my eyes on the 22nd of August, in one of the
walls in the harmas, contained the finished cocoon a week later. (The
harmas was the piece of enclosed waste land in which the author used to
study his insects in their natural state. Cf. "The Life of the Fly,"
by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter
1.--Translator's Note.) I have not noted many examples of so rapid a
development. This cocoon recalls, in its shape and texture, that of the
Bembex-wasps. It is hard and mineralized, this is to say, the warp and
woof of silk are hidden by a thick encrustation of sand. This composite
structure seems to me characteristic of the family; at all events I find
it in the three species whose cocoons I know. If the Tachytes are nearly
related to the Spheges in diet, they are far removed from them in the
industry of their larvae. The first are workers in mosaic, encrusting a
network of silk and sand; the second weave pure silk.

Of smaller size and clad in black with trimmings of silvery down on the
edge of the abdominal segments, the Tarsal Tachytes frequents the
ledges of soft limestone in fairly populous colonies. (T. tarsina, LEP.)
(According to M. J. Perez, to whom I submitted the Wasp of which I am
about to speak, this Tachytes might well be a new species, if it is not
Lepelletier's T. tarsina or its equivalent, Panzer's T. unicolor. Any
one wishing to clear up this point will always recognize the quarrelsome
insect by its behaviour. A minute description seems useless to me in the
type of investigation which I am pursuing.--Author's Note.) August and
September are the season of her labours. Her burrows, very close to
one another when an easily-worked vein presents itself, afford an ample
harvest of cocoons once the site is discovered. In a certain gravel-pit
in the neighbourhood, with vertical walls visited by the sun, I have
been able within a short space of time to collect enough to fill the
hollow of my hand completely. They differ from the cocoons of the
preceding species only in their smaller size. The provisions consist of
young Acridians, varying from about a quarter to half an inch in length.
The adult insect does not appear in the assorted bags of game, being
no doubt too tough for the feeble grub. All the carcases consist of
Locust-larvae, whose budding wings leave the back uncovered and put one
in mind of the short skirts of a skimpy jacket. Small so that it may be
tender, the game is numerous so that it may suffice all needs. I
count from two to four carcases to a cell. When the time comes we will
discover the reason for these differences in the rations served.

The Mantis-killing Tachytes wears a red scarf, like her kinswoman,
Panzer's Tachytes. (The Mantis-hunting Tachytes was submitted to
examination by M. J. Perez, who failed to recognize her. This species
may well be new to our fauna. I confine myself to calling her the
Mantis-killing Tachytes and leave to the specialists the task of
adorning her with a Latin name, if it be really the fact that the Wasp
is not yet catalogued. I will be brief in my delineation. To my thinking
the best description is this: mantis-hunter. With this information it
is impossible to mistake the insect, in my district of course. I may add
that it is black, with the first two abdominal segments, the legs and
the tarsi a rusty red. Clad in the same livery and much smaller than the
female, the male is remarkable for his eyes, which are of a beautiful
lemon-yellow when he is alive. The length is nearly half an inch for the
female and a little more than half this for the male.--Author's Note.)
I do not think that she is very widely distributed. I made her
acquaintance in the Serignan woods, where she inhabits, or rather used
to inhabit--for I fear that I have depopulated and even destroyed the
community by my repeated excavations--where she used to inhabit one of
those little mounds of sand which the wind heaps up against the rosemary
clumps. Outside this small community, I never saw her again. Her
history, rich in incident, will be given with all the detail which
it deserves. I will confine myself for the moment to mentioning her
rations, which consist of Mantis-larvae, those of the Praying Mantis
predominating. (Cf. "The Life of the Grasshopper": chapters 6 to
9.--Translator's Note.) My lists record from three to sixteen heads for
each cell. Once again we note a great inequality of rations, the reason
for which we must try to discover.

What shall I say of the Black Tachytes (T. nigra, VAN DER LIND) that I
have not already said in telling the story of the Yellow-winged Sphex?
("The Hunting Wasps": chapters 4 to 6.--Translator's Note.) I have there
described her contests with the Sphex, whose burrow she seems to me
to have usurped; I show her dragging along the ruts in the roads a
paralysed Cricket, seized by the hauling-ropes, his antennae; I speak of
her hesitations, which lead me to suspect her for a homeless vagabond,
and finally on her surrender of her game, with which she seems at once
satisfied and embarrassed. Save for the dispute with the Sphex, an
unique event in my records as observer, I have seen all the rest many
a time, but never anything more. The Black Tachytes, though the most
frequent of all in my neighbourhood, remains a riddle to me. I
know nothing of her dwelling, her larvae, her cocoons, her
family-arrangements. All that I can affirm, judging by the invariable
nature of the prey which one sees her dragging along, is that she must
feed her larvae on the same non-adult Cricket that the Yellow-winged
Sphex chooses for hers.

Is she a poacher, a pillager of other's property, or a genuine huntress?
My suspicions are persistent, though I know how chary a man should be of
suspicions. At one time I had my doubts about Panzer's Tachytes, whom
I grudged a prey to which the White-banded Sphex might have laid claim.
To-day I have no such doubts: she is an honest worker and her game is
really the result of her hunting. While waiting for the truth to be
revealed and my suspicions set aside, I will complete the little that I
know of her by noting that the Black Tachytes passes the winter in
the adult form and away from her cell. She hibernates, like the Hairy
Ammophila. In warm, sheltered places, with low, perpendicular, bare
banks, dear to the Wasps, I am certain of finding her at any time during
the winter, however briefly I investigate the earthen surface, riddled
with galleries. I find the Tachytes cowering singly in the hot oven
formed by the end of a tunnel. If the temperature be mild and the sky
clear, she emerges from her retreat in January and February and comes to
the surface of the bank to see whether spring is making progress.
When the shadows fall and the heat decreases, she reenters her
winter-quarters.

The Anathema Tachytes (T. anathema, VAN DER LIND), the giant of her
race, almost as large as the Languedocian Sphex and, like her, decorated
with a red scarf round the base of the abdomen, is rarer than any of
her congeners. I have come upon her only some four or five times, as an
isolated individual and always in circumstances which will tell us
of the nature of her game with a probability that comes very near to
certainty. She hunts underground, like the Scoliae. In September I see
her go down into the soil, which has been loosened by a recent light
shower; the movement of the earth turned over keeps me informed of her
subterranean progress. She is like the Mole, ploughing through a meadow
in pursuit of his White Worm. She comes out farther on, nearly a yard
from the spot at which she went in. This long journey underground has
taken her only a few minutes.

Is this due to extraordinary powers of excavation on her part? By no
means: the Anathema Tachytes is an energetic tunneller, no doubt, but,
after all, is incapable of performing so great a labour in so short
a time. If the underground worker is so swift in her progress, it is
because the track followed has already been covered by another. The
trail is ready prepared. We will describe it, for it is clearly defined
before the intervention of the Wasp.

On the surface of the ground, for a length of two paces at most, runs
a sinuous line, a beading of crumbled soil, roughly the width of my
finger. From this line of ramifications (others) shoot out to left and
right, much shorter and irregularly distributed. One need not be a great
entomological scholar to recognize, at the first glance, in these pads
of raised earth, the trail of a Mole-cricket, the Mole among insects. It
is the Mole-cricket who, seeking for a root to suit her, has excavated
the winding tunnel, with investigation-galleries grafted to either side
of the main road. The passage is free therefore, or at most blocked by a
few landslips, of which the Tachytes will easily dispose. This explains
her rapid journey underground.

But what does she do there? For she is always there, in the few
observations which chance affords me. A subterranean excursion would not
attract the Wasp if it had no object. And its object is certainly the
search for some sort of game for her larvae. The inference becomes
inevitable: the Anathema Tachytes, who explores the Mole-cricket's
galleries, gives her larvae this same Mole-cricket as their food. Very
probably the specimen selected is a young one, for the adult insect
would be too big. Besides, to this consideration of quantity is added
that of quality. Young and tender flesh is highly appreciated, as
witness the Tarsal Tachytes, the Black Tachytes and the Mantis-killing
Tachytes, who all three select game that is not yet made tough by age.
It goes without saying that the moment the huntress emerged from the
ground I proceeded to dig up the track. The Mole-cricket was no longer
there. The Tachytes had come too late; and so had I.

Well, how right was I to define the Tachytes as a Locust lover! What
constancy in the gastronomic rules of the race! And what tact in varying
the game, while keeping within the order of the Orthoptera! What have
the Locust, the Cricket, the Praying Mantis and the Mole-cricket in
common, as regards their general appearance? Why, absolutely nothing!
None of us, if he were unfamiliar with the delicate associations
dictated by anatomy, would think of classing them together. The
Tachytes, on the other hand, makes no mistake. Guided by her instinct,
which rivals the science of a Latreille, she groups them all
together. (Pierre Andre Latreille (1762-1833), one of the founders of
entomological science, a professor at the Musee d'histoire naturelle and
member of the Academie des sciences.--Translator's Note.)

This instinctive taxonomy becomes more surprising still if we consider
the variety of the game stored in a single burrow. The Mantis-killing
Tachytes, for instance, preys indiscriminately upon all the Mantides
that occur in her neighbourhood. I see her warehousing three of them,
the only varieties, in fact, that I know in my district. They are the
following: the Praying Mantis (M. religiosa, LIN.), the Grey Mantis
(Ameles decolor, CHARP. (Cf. "The Life of the Grasshopper": chapter
10.--Translator's Note.)) and the Empusa (E. pauperata, LATR. (Cf. idem:
chapter 9.--Translator's Note.)). The numerical predominance in the
Tachytes' cells belongs to the Praying Mantis; and the Grey Mantis
occupies second place. The Empusa, who is comparatively rare on the
brushwood in the neighbourhood, is also rare in the store-houses of the
Wasp; nevertheless her presence is repeated often enough to show that
the huntress appreciates the value of this prey when she comes across
it. The three sorts of game are in the larval state, with rudimentary
wings. Their dimensions, which vary a good deal, fluctuate between
two-fifths and four-fifths of an inch in length.

The Praying Mantis is a bright green; she boasts an elongated prothorax
and an alert gait. The other Mantis is ash-grey. Her prothorax is short
and her movements heavy. The coloration therefore is no guide to the
huntress, any more than the gait. The green and the grey, the swift
and the slow are unable to baffle her perspicacity. To her, despite the
great difference in appearance, the two victims are Mantes. And she is
right.

But what are we to say of the Empusa? The insect world, at all events in
our parts, contains no more fantastic creature. The children here, who
are remarkable for finding names which really depict the animal, call
the larva "the Devilkin." It is indeed a spectre, a diabolical phantom
worthy of the pencil of a Callot. (Jacques Callot (1592-1635), the
French engraver and painter, famous for the grotesque nature of his
subjects.--Translator's Note.) There is nothing to beat it in the
extravagant medley of figures in his "Temptation of Saint Anthony." Its
flat abdomen, scalloped at the edges, rises into a twisted crook; its
peaked head carries on the top two large, divergent, tusk-shaped horns;
its sharp, pointed face, which can turn and look to either side,
would fit the wily purpose of some Mephistopheles; its long legs have
cleaver-like appendages at the joints, similar to the arm-pieces which
the knights of old used to bear upon their elbows. Perched high upon the
shanks of its four hind-legs, with its abdomen curled, its thorax raised
erect, its front-legs, the traps and implements of warfare, folded
against its chest, it sways limply from side to side, on the tip of the
bough.

Any one seeing it for the first time in its grotesque pose will give
a start of surprise. The Tachytes knows no such alarm. If she catches
sight of it, she seizes it by the neck and stabs it. It will be a treat
for her children. How does she manage to recognize in this spectre the
near relation of the Praying Mantis? When frequent hunting-expeditions
have familiarized her with the last-named and suddenly, in the midst of
the chase, she encounters the Devilkin, how does she become aware that
this strange find makes yet another excellent addition to her larder?
This question, I fear, will never receive an adequate reply. Other
huntresses have already set us the problem; others will set it to us
again. I shall return to it, not to solve it, but to show even more
plainly how obscure and profound it is. But we will first complete the
story of the Mantis-killing Tachytes.

The colony which forms the subject of my investigations is established
in a mound of fine sand which I myself cut into, a couple of years ago,
in order to unearth a few Bembex larvae. The entrances to the Tachytes'
dwelling open upon the little upright bank of the section. At the
beginning of July the work is in full swing. It must have been going on
already for a week or two, for I find very forward larvae, as well as
recent cocoons. There are here, digging into the sand or returning from
expeditions with their booty, some hundred females, whose burrows, all
very close to one another, cover an area of barely a square yard. This
hamlet, small in extent, but nevertheless densely populated, shows us
the Mantis-slayer under a moral aspect which is not shared by the Locust
slayer, Panzer's Tachytes, who resembles her so closely in costume.
Though engaged in individual tasks, the first seeks the society of her
kind, as do certain of the Sphex-wasps, while the second establishes
herself in solitude, after the fashion of the Ammophila. Neither the
personal form nor the nature of the occupation determines sociability.

Crouching voluptuously in the sun, on the sand at the foot of the bank,
the males lie waiting for the females, to plague them as they pass. They
are ardent lovers, but cut a poor figure. Their linear dimensions
are barely half those of the other sex, which implies a volume only
one-eighth as great. At a short distance they appear to wear on their
heads a sort of gaudy turban. At close quarters this headgear is seen to
consist of the eyes, which are very large and a bright lemon-yellow and
which almost entirely surround the head.

At ten o'clock in the morning, when the heat begins to grow intolerable
to the observer, there is a continual coming and going between the
burrows and the tufts of grass, everlasting, thyme and wormwood, which
constitute the Tachytes' hunting-grounds within a moderate radius. The
journey is so short that the Wasp brings her game home on the wing,
usually in a single flight. She holds it by the fore-part, a very
judicious precaution, which is favourable to rapid stowage in the
warehouse, for then the Mantis' legs stretch backwards, along the axis
of the body, instead of folding and projecting sideways, when their
resistance would be difficult to overcome in a narrow gallery. The lanky
prey dangles beneath the huntress, all limp, lifeless and paralysed.
The Tachytes, still flying, alights on the threshold of the home and
immediately, contrary to the custom of Panzer's Tachytes, enters with
her prey trailing behind her. It is not unusual for a male to come upon
the scene at the moment of the mother's arrival. He is promptly snubbed.
This is the time for work, not for amusement. The rebuffed male
resumes his post as a watcher in the sun; and the housewife stows her
provisions.

But she does not always do so without hindrance. Let me recount one of
the misadventures of this work of storage. There is in the neighbourhood
of the burrows a plant which catches insects with glue. It is the Oporto
silene (S. portensis), a curious growth, a lover of the sea-side dunes,
which, though of Portuguese origin, as its name would seem to indicate,
ventures inland, even as far as my part of the country, where it
represents perhaps a survivor of the coastal flora of what was once a
Pliocene sea. The sea has disappeared; a few plants of its shores have
remained behind. This Silene carries in most of its internodes, in those
both of the branches and of the main stalk, a viscous ring, two- to
four-fifths of an inch wide, sharply delimited above and below. The
coating of glue is of a pale brown. Its stickiness is so great that the
least touch is enough to hold the object. I find Midges, Plant-lice and
Ants caught in it, as well as tufted seeds which have blown from the
capitula of the Cichoriaceae. A Gad-fly, as big as a Blue bottle, falls
into the trap before my eyes. She has barely alighted on the perilous
perch when lo, she is held by the hinder tarsi! The Fly makes violent
efforts to take wing; she shakes the slender plant from top to bottom.
If she frees her hinder tarsi she remains snared by the front tarsi
and has to begin all over again. I was doubting the possibility of her
escape when, after a good quarter of an hour's struggle, she succeeded
in extricating herself.

But, where the Gad-fly has got off, the Midge remains. The winged Aphis
also remains, the Ant, the Mosquito and many another of the smaller
insects. What does the plant do with its captures? Of what use are
these trophies of corpses hanging by a leg or a wing? Does the
vegetable bird-limer, with its sticky rings, derive advantage from these
death-struggles? A Darwinian, remembering the carnivorous plants, would
say yes. As for me, I don't believe a word of it. The Oporto silene is
ringed with bands of gum. Why? I don't know. Insects are caught in these
snares. Of what use are they to the plant? Why, none at all; and that's
all about it. I leave to others, bolder than myself, the fantastic idea
of taking these annular exudations for a digestive fluid which will
reduce the captured Midges to soup and make them serve to feed the
Silene. Only I warn them that the insects sticking to the plant do not
dissolve into broth, but shrivel, quite uselessly, in the sun.

Let us return to the Tachytes, who is also a victim of the vegetable
snare. With a sudden flight, a huntress arrives, carrying her drooping
prey. She grazes the Silene's lime-twigs too closely. Behold the Mantis
caught by the abdomen. For twenty minutes at least the Wasp, still on
the wing, tugs at her, tugging again and again, to overcome the cause of
the hitch and release the spoil. The hauling-method, a continuation of
the flight, comes to nothing; and no other is attempted. At last the
insect wearies and leaves the Mantis hanging to the Silene.

Now or never was the moment for the intervention of that tiny glimmer
of reason which Darwin so generously grants to animals. Do not, if you
please, confound reason with intelligence, as people are too prone to
do. I deny the one; and the other is incontestable, within very modest
limits. It was, I said, the moment to reason a little, to discover the
cause of the hitch and to attack the difficulty at its source. For the
Tachytes the matter was of the simplest. She had but to grab the body
by the skin of the abdomen immediately above the spot caught by the glue
and to pull it towards her, instead of persevering in her flight without
releasing the neck. Simple though this mechanical problem was, the
insect was unable to solve it, because she was not able to trace the
effect back to the cause, because she did not even suspect that the
stoppage had a cause.

Ants doting on sugar and accustomed to cross a foot-bridge in order
to reach the warehouse are absolutely prevented from doing so when the
bridge is interrupted by a slight gap. They would only need a few grains
of sand to fill the void and restore the causeway. They do not for a
moment dream of it, plucky navvies though they be, capable of raising
miniature mountains of excavated soil. We can get them to give us an
enormous cone of earth, an instinctive piece of work, but we shall never
obtain the juxtaposition of three grains of sand, a reasoned piece of
work. The Ant does not reason, any more than the Tachytes.

If you bring up a tame Fox and set his platter of food before him, this
creature of a thousand tricks confines himself to tugging with all his
might at the leash which keeps him a step or two from his dinner. He
pulls as the Tachytes pulls, exhausts himself in futile efforts and then
lies down, with his little eyes leering fixedly at the dish. Why does he
not turn round? This would increase his radius; and he could reach then
the food with his hind-foot and pull it towards him. The idea never
occurs to him. Yet another animal deprived of reason.

Friend Bull, my Dog, is no better-endowed, despite his quality as a
candidate for humanity. In our excursions through the woods, he happens
to get caught by the paw in a wire snare set for rabbits. Like the
Tachytes, he tugs at it obstinately and only pulls the noose tighter.
I have to release him when he does not himself succeed in snapping the
wire by his hard pulling. When he tries to leave the room, if the two
leaves of the door are just ajar, he contents himself with pushing his
muzzle, like a wedge, into the too narrow aperture. He moves forward,
pushing in the direction which he wishes to take. His simple, dog-like
method has one unfailing result: the two leaves of the door, when
pushed, merely shut still closer. It would be easy for him to pull one
of them towards him with his paw, which would make the passage wider;
but this would be a movement backward, contrary to his natural impulse;
and so he does not think of it. Yet another creature that does not
reason.

The Tachytes, who stubbornly persists in tugging at her limed Mantis
and refuses to acknowledge any other method of wresting her from the
Silene's snare, shows us the Wasp in an unflattering light. What a very
poor intellect! The insect becomes only the more wonderful, therefore,
when we consider its supreme talent as an anatomist. Many a time I have
insisted upon the incomprehensible wisdom of instinct; I do so again at
the risk of repeating myself. An idea is like a nail: it is not to be
driven in save by repeated blows. By hitting it again and again, I hope
to make it enter the most rebellious brains. This time I shall attack
the problem from the other end, that is, I shall first allow human
knowledge to have its say and shall then interrogate the insect's
knowledge.

The outward structure of the Praying Mantis would of itself be enough to
teach us the arrangement of the nerve-centres which the Tachytes has to
injure in order to paralyse its victim, which is destined to be devoured
alive but harmless. A narrow and very long prothorax divides the front
pair of legs from the two hinder pairs. There must therefore be an
isolated ganglion in front and two ganglia, close to each other,
about two-fifths of an inch back. Dissection confirms this forecast
completely. It shows us three fairly bulky thoracic ganglia, arranged in
the same manner as the legs. The first which actuates the fore-legs, is
placed opposite their roots. It is the largest of the three. It is also
the most important, for it presides over the insect's weapons, over the
two powerful arms, toothed like saws and ending in harpoons. The other
two, divided from the first by the whole length of the prothorax, each
face the origin of the corresponding legs; consequently they are very
near each other. Beyond them are the abdominal ganglia, which I pass
over in silence, as the operating insect does not have to trouble about
them. The movements of the belly are mere pulsations and are in no way
dangerous.

Now let us do a little reasoning on behalf of our non-reasoning insect.
The sacrificer is weak; the victim is comparatively powerful. Three
strokes of the lancet must abolish all offensive movement. Where will
the first stroke be delivered? In front is a real engine of warfare, a
pair of powerful shears with toothed jaws. Let the fore-arm close
upon the upper arm; and the imprudent insect, crushed between the two
saw-blades, will be torn to pieces; wounded by the terminal hook, it
will be eviscerated. This ferocious mechanism is the great danger; it is
this that must be mastered at the outset, at the risk of life; the rest
is less urgent. The first blow of the stylet, cautiously directed, is
therefore aimed at the lethal fore-legs, which imperil the vivisector's
own existence. Above all, there must be no hesitation. The blow must be
accurate then and there, or the sacrificer will be caught in the
vice and perish. The two other pairs of legs present no danger to the
operator, who might neglect them if she had only her own security to
think of; but the surgeon is operating with a view to the egg, which
demands complete immobility in the provisions. Their centres of
innervation will therefore be stabbed as well, with the leisure which
the Mantis, now put out of action, permits. These legs, as well as their
nervous centres, are situated very far behind the first point attacked.
There is a long neutral interval, that of the prothorax, into which it
is quite useless to drive the sting. This interval has to be crossed; by
a backward movement conforming with the secrets of the victim's internal
anatomy, the second ganglion must be reached and then its neighbour, the
third. In short, the surgical operation may be formulated thus: a
first stab of the lancet in front; a considerable movement to the rear,
measuring about two-fifths of an inch; lastly, two lancet-thrusts at
two points very close together. Thus speaks the science of man; thus
counsels reason, guided by anatomical structure. Having said this much
let us observe the insect's practice.

There is no difficulty about seeing the Tachytes operate in our
presence; we have only to resort to the method of substitution, which
has already done me so much service, that is, to deprive the huntress of
her prey and at once to give her, in exchange, a living Mantis of about
the same size. This substitution is impracticable with the majority
of the Tachytes, who reach the threshold of their dwelling in a single
flight and at once vanish underground with their game. A few of them,
from time to time, harassed perhaps by their burden, chance to alight at
a short distance from their burrow, or even drop their prey. I profit by
these rare occasions to witness the tragedy.

The dispossessed Wasp recognizes instantly, from the proud bearing of
the substituted Mantis, that she is no longer embracing and carrying off
an inoffensive carcase. Her hovering, hitherto silent, develops a buzz,
perhaps to overawe the victim; her flight becomes an extremely rapid
oscillation, always behind the quarry. It is as who should say the quick
movement of a pendulum swinging without a wire to hang from. The Mantis,
however, lifts herself boldly upon her four hind-legs; she raises the
fore-part of her body, opens, closes and again opens her shears and
presents them threateningly at the enemy; using a privilege which no
other insect shares, she turns her head this way and that, as we do when
we look over our shoulders; she faces her assailant, ready to strike a
return blow wheresoever the attack may come. It is the first time that
I have witnessed such defensive daring. What will be the outcome of it
all?

The Wasp continues to oscillate behind the Mantis, in order to avoid the
formidable grappling-engine; then, suddenly, when she judges that the
other is baffled by the rapidity of her manoeuvres, she hurls herself
upon the insect's back, seizes its neck with her mandibles, winds her
legs round its thorax and hastily delivers a first thrust of the sting,
to the front, at the root of the lethal legs. Complete success! The
deadly shears fall powerless. The operator then lets herself slip as she
might slide down a pole, retreats along the Mantis' back and, going a
trifle lower, less than a finger's breadth, she stops and paralyses,
this time without hurrying herself, the two pairs of hind-legs. It is
done: the patient lies motionless; only the tarsi quiver, twitching in
their last convulsions. The sacrificer brushes her wings for a moment
and polishes her antennae by passing them through her mouth, an habitual
sign of tranquillity returning after the emotions of the conflict; she
seizes the game by the neck, takes it in her legs and flies away with
it.

What do you say to it all? Do not the scientist's theory and the
insect's practice agree most admirably? Has not the animal accomplished
to perfection what anatomy and physiology enabled us to foretell?
Instinct, a gratuitous attribute, an unconscious inspiration, rivals
knowledge, that most costly acquisition. What strikes me most is the
sudden recoil after the first thrust of the sting. The Hairy Ammophila,
operating on her caterpillar, likewise recoils, but progressively,
from one segment to the next. Her deliberate surgery might receive a
quasi-explanation if we ascribe it to a certain uniformity. With the
Tachytes and the Mantis this paltry argument escapes us. Here are
no lancet-pricks regularly distributed; on the contrary, the
operating-method betrays a lack of symmetry which would be
inconceivable, if the organization of the patient did not serve as a
guide. The Tachytes therefore knows where her prey's nerve-centres lie;
or, to speak more correctly, she behaves as though she knew.

This science which is unconscious of itself has not been acquired, by
her and by her race, through experiments perfected from age to age and
habits transmitted from one generation to the next. It is impossible,
I am prepared to declare a hundred times, a thousand times over, it is
absolutely impossible to experiment and to learn an art when you are
lost if you do not succeed at the first attempt. Don't talk to me of
atavism, of small successes increasing by inheritance, when the novice,
if he misdirected his weapon, would be crushed in the trap of the two
saws and fall a prey to the savage Mantis! The peaceable Locust, if
missed, protests against the attack with a few kicks; the carnivorous
Mantis, who is in the habit of feasting on Wasps far more powerful than
the Tachytes, would protest by eating the bungler; the game would devour
the hunter, an excellent catch. Mantis-paralysing is a most perilous
trade and admits of no half-successes; you have to excel in it from the
first, under pain of death. No, the surgical art of the Tachytes is not
an acquired art. Whence then does it come, if not from the universal
knowledge in which all things move and have their being!

What would happen if, in exchange for her Praying Mantis, I were to give
the Tachytes a young Grasshopper? In rearing insects at home, I have
already noted that the larvae put up very well with this diet; and I
am surprised that the mother does not follow the example of the Tarsal
Tachytes and provide her family with a skewerful of Locusts instead
of the risky prey which she selects. The diet would be practically the
same; and the terrible shears would no longer be a danger. With such a
patient would her operating-method remain the same; should we again
see a sudden recoil after the first stab under the neck; or would the
vivisector modify her art in conformity with the unfamiliar nervous
organization?

This second alternative is highly improbable. It would be nonsense to
expect to see the paralyser vary the number and the distribution of the
wounds according to the genus of the victim. Supremely skilled in the
task that has fallen to its lot, the insect knows nothing further.

The first alternative seems to offer a certain chance and deserves a
test. I offer the Tachytes, deprived of her Mantis, a small Grasshopper,
whose hind-legs I amputate to prevent his leaping. The disabled Acridian
jogs along the sand. The Wasp flies round him for a moment, casts a
contemptuous glance upon the cripple and withdraws without attempting
action. Let the prey offered be large or small, green or grey, short
or long, rather like the Mantis or quite different, all my efforts
miscarry. The Tachytes recognizes in an instant that this is no
business of hers; this is not her family game; she goes off without even
honouring my Grasshoppers with a peck of her mandibles.

This stubborn refusal is not due to gastronomical causes. I have stated
that the larvae reared by my own hands feed on young Grasshoppers as
readily as on young Mantes; they do not seem to perceive any difference
between the two dishes; they thrive equally on the game chosen by me
and that selected by the mother. If the mother sets no value on the
Grasshopper, what then can be the reason of her refusal? I can see only
one: this quarry, which is not hers, perhaps inspires her with fear, as
any unknown thing might do; the ferocious Mantis does not alarm her,
but the peaceable Grasshopper terrifies her. And then, if she were to
overcome her apprehensions, she does not know how to master the Acridian
and, above all, how to operate upon him. To every man his trade, to
every Wasp her own way of wielding her sting. Modify the conditions ever
so slightly; and these skilful paralysers are at an utter loss.

To every insect also its own art of fashioning the cocoon, an art which
varies greatly, an art in which the larva displays all the resources
of its instincts. The Tachytes, the Bembeces, the Stizi, the Palari and
other burrowers build composite cocoons, hard as fruit-stones, formed of
an encrustation of sand in a network of silk. We are already acquainted
with the work of the Bembex. I will recall the fact that their larva
first weaves a conical, horizontal bag of pure white silk, with wide
meshes, held in place by interlaced threads which fix it to the walls
of the cell. I have compared this bag, because of its shape, with a
fishtrap. Without leaving this hammock, stretching its neck through the
orifice, the worker gathers from without a little heap of sand, which
it stores inside its workshop. Then, selecting the grains one by one,
it encrusts them all around itself in the fabric of the bag and cements
them with the fluid from its spinnerets, which hardens at once. When
this task is finished, the house has still to be closed, for it has been
wide open all this time to permit of the renewal of the store of sand
as the heap inside becomes exhausted. For this purpose a cap of silk is
woven across the opening and finally encrusted with the materials which
the larva has retained at its disposal.

The Tachytes builds in quite another fashion, although its work, once
finished, does not differ from that of the Bembex. The larva surrounds
itself, to begin with, about the middle of its body with a silken girdle
which a number of threads, very irregularly distributed, hold in place
and connect with the walls of the cell. Sand is collected, within reach
of the worker, on this general scaffolding. Then begins the work of
minor masonry, with grains of sand for rubble and the secretion of the
spinnerets for cement. The first course is laid upon the fore-edge of
the suspensory ring. When the circle is completed, a second course of
grains of sand, stuck together by the fluid silk, is raised upon the
hardened edge of what has just been done. Thus the work proceeds,
by ring-shaped courses, laid edge to edge, until the cocoon, having
acquired half of its proper length, is rounded into a cap and finally is
closed. The building-methods of the Tachytes-larva remind me of a mason
constructing a round chimney, a narrow tower of which he occupies the
centre. Turning on his own axis and using the materials placed to his
hand, he encloses himself little by little in his sheath of masonry.
In the same way the worker encloses itself in its mosaic. To build the
second half of the cocoon, the larva turns round and builds in the same
way on the other edge of the original ring. In about thirty-six hours
the solid shell is completed.

I am rather interested to see the Bembex and the Tachytes, two workers
in the same guild, employ such different methods to achieve the same
result. The first begins by weaving an eel-trap of pure silk and next
encrusts the grains of sand inside; the second, a bolder architect, is
economical of the silk envelope, confines itself to a hanging girdle and
builds course by course. The building-materials are the same: sand and
silk; the surroundings amid which the two artisans work are the same: a
cell in a soil of sandy gravel; yet each of the builders possesses its
individual art, its own plan, its one method.

The nature of the food has no more effect upon the larva's talents than
the environment in which it lives or the materials employed. The proof
of this is furnished by Stiza ruficornis, another builder of cocoons in
grains of sand cemented with silk. This sturdy Wasp digs her burrows in
soft sandstone. Like the Mantis-killing Tachytes, she hunts the various
Mantides of the countryside, consisting mainly of the Praying Mantis;
only her large size requires them to be more fully developed, without
however having attained the form and the dimensions of the adult. She
places three to five of them in each cell.

In solidity and volume her cocoon rivals that of the largest Bembex;
but it differs from it, at first sight, by a singular feature of which
I know no other example. From the side of the shell, which is uniformly
smoothed on every side, a rough knob protrudes, a little clod of sand
stuck on to the rest. The work of Stizus ruficornis can at once be
recognized, among all the other cocoons of a similar nature, by this
protuberance.

Its origin will be explained by the method which the larva follows in
constructing its strong-box. At the beginning, a conical bag is woven
of pure white silk; you might take it for the initial eel-trap of the
Bembeces, only this bag has two openings, a very wide one in front and
another, very narrow one at the side. Through the front opening the
Stizus provides itself with sand as and when it spends this material on
encrusting the interior. This strengthens the cocoon; and the cap
which closes it is made next. So far it is exactly like the work of the
Bembex. We now have the worker enclosed, engaged in perfecting the inner
wall. For these final touches a little more sand is needed. It obtains
it from outside by means of the aperture which it has taken the
precaution of contriving in the side of its building, a narrow
dormer-window just large enough to allow its slender neck to pass. When
the store has been taken in, this accessory orifice, which is used only
during the last few moments, is closed with a mouthful of mortar, thrust
outward from within. This forms the irregular nipple which projects from
the side of the shell.

For the present I shall not expatiate further upon Stizus ruficornis,
whose complete biography would be out of place in this chapter. I will
limit myself to mentioning its method of constructing strong-boxes in
order to compare it with that of the Bembex and above all with that
of the Tachytes, a consumer, like it

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