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THE HUNTING WASPS

BOOKS BY J. HENRI FABRE

THE LIFE OF THE SPIDER

THE LIFE OF THE FLY

THE MASON-BEES

BRAMBLE-BEES AND OTHERS

THE HUNTING WASPS

THE LIFE OF THE CATERPILLAR

THE LIFE OF THE GRASSHOPPER

THE SACRED BEETLE AND

QTHERS

THE MASON-WASPS

1

THE
HUNTING WASPS

BY

J. HENRI FABRE

translated by
Alexander Teixiera de Mattos

FBLLOW OF THE .ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OP LONDON

„ .NEW. YORK :• ,
DODD] MS ad and C0^4PAN Y
1919

^

Copyright, 1915

bt dodd, mead and company

CONTENTS

PAGE

translator's note Vll

I THE BUPRESTIS-HUNTING CER-

CERIS I

II THE GREAT CERCERIS . . -19

III A SCIENTIFIC SLAUGHTERER . . 4^

IV THE YELLOW-WINGED SPHEX . 6 1
V THE THREE DAGGER-THRUSTS . 8o

VI THE LARVA AND THE NYMPH . 92

VII ADVANCED THEORIES . . .115

VIII THE LANGUEDOCIAN SPHEX . .139

IX THE WISDOM OF INSTINCT . . 161

X THE IGNORANCE OF INSTINCT . 1 88

XI AN ASCENT OF MONT VENTOUX 2 I 2

XII THE TRAVEILERS ..... 233

XHI THE AMM0^H;L/£ ;,-.. . . . 25O

XIV THL bembex . •%;,: . . . 272

XV THE FLY-HUNT . • 294

Xvf'A PARASITE OF THE'' BEMBEX.

THP/CbCOGN *.'--'. ' . . 3^^

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

XVII THE RETURN TO THE NEST . -331
XVIII THE HAIRY AMMOPHILA . . -351
XIX AN UNKNOWN SENSE . . -371
XX THE MODERN THEORY OF IN-
STINCT 385

APPENDIX 413

INDEX 421

H

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

ENRI Fabre's essays on Wasps will fill
three volumes in all, of which this is the
first. The others will be entitled The Mason-
Wasps and More Hunting Wasps. The
former will include the chapters on the Com-
mon or Social Wasp.

The first seventeen chapters of the present
book appeared some years ago, wholly or m
part, in a version of Vol. I of the Souvenirs
Entomologiques prepared by the author of
Mademoiselle Mori for Messrs. Macmillan
& Co., by arrangement with whom I am now
permitted to retranslate and republish them
for the purpose of this collected and definite
edition of Fabre's entomological works. Of
the remainder, The Modern Theory of In-
stinct first saw the light in The English Re-
view and An Unknown Sense, in an abbrevi-
ated form, in The Daily Mail.

It is a pleasure once more to express my
thanks to Miss Frances Rodwell, who, as
usual, has rendered me much valuable assist-

Translator's Note

ance, and to Mr. Geoffrey Meade-Waldo, of
the Natural History Museum, who has been
kind enough to set me right on many an
entomological point.

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
Chelsea, 1915.

CHAPTER I

THE BUPRESTIS-HUNTING CERCERIS

THERE are for each one of us, according
to his turn of mind, certain books that
open up horizons hitherto undreamed of and
mark an epoch in our mental life. They
fling wide the gates of a new world wherein
our intellectual powers are henceforth to be
employed; they are the spark which lights the
fuel on a hearth doomed, without its aid, to
remain indefinitely bleak and cold. And it
Is often chance that places in our hands those
books which mark the beginning of a new
era in the evolution of our Ideas. The most
casual circumstances, a few lines that happen
somehow to come before our eyes decide our
future and plant us in the appointed groove.
One winter evening, Vv'hen the rest of the
household was asleep, as I sat reading beside
a stove whose ashes were still warm, my book
made me forget for a while the cares of the
morrow: those heavy cares of a poor profes-
sor of physics who, after piling up diplomas
and for a quarter of a century performing

The Hunting Wasps

services of uncontested merit, was receiving
for himself and his family a stipend of six-
teen hundred francs, or less than the wages of
a groom in a decent establishment. Such was
the disgraceful parsimony of the day where
education was concerned; such was the edict
of our government red-tape : I was an irregu-
lar, the offspring of my solitary studies. And
so I was forgetting the poverty and anxieties
of a professor's life, amid my books, when I
chanced to turn over the pages of an entomo-
logical essay that had fallen into my hands I
forget how.

It was a monograph by the then father of
entomology, the venerable scientist Leon Du-
four,^ on the habits of a Wasp that hunted
Buprestis-beetles. Certainly, I had not
waited till then to interest myself in insects;
from my early childhood, I had delighted in
Beetles, Bees and Butterflies; as far back as
I can remember, I see myself in ecstasy be-
fore the splendour of a Ground-beetle's wing-
cases or the wings of Papilio machaon, the

^Leon Dufour (1780-1865) was an army surgeon who
served with distinction in several campaigns and sub-
sequently practised as a doctor in the Landes. He at-
tained great eminence as a naturalist. Cf. The Life of
the Spider: by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander
Teixeira de Mattos, chap. i. — Translator's Note.

The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris

Swallowtail. The fire was laid; the spark to
kindle it was absent. Leon Dufour's essay
provided that spark.

New hghts burst forth: I received a sort
of mental revelation. So there was more in
science than the arranging of pretty Beetles
in a cork box and giving them names and
classifying them; there was something much
finer : a close and loving study of insect life,
the examination of the structure and especially
the faculties of each species. I read of a
magnificent instance of this, glowing with ex-
citement as I did so. Some time after, aided
by those lucky circumstances which he who
seeks them eagerly is always able to find, I
myself published an entomological article, a
supplement to Leon Dufour's. This first
work of mine won honourable mention from
the Institute of France and was awarded a
prize for experimental physiology. But soon
I received a far more welcome recompense,
in the shape of a most eulogistic and encour-
aging letter from the very man who had in-
spired me. From his home in the Landes,
the revered master sent me a warm expression
of his enthusiasm and urged me to go on with
my studies. Even now, at that sacred recol-
lection, my old eyes fill with happy tears. O
3

The Hunting Wasps

fair days of illusion, of faith in the future,
where are you now?

I am sure that my readers will welcome an
extract from the essay that formed the start-
ing-point of my own researches, especially as
this extract is necessary for the due under-
standing of what follows. I will therefore
let the master speak for himself, abridging
his words in parts: ^

" In all insect history, I can think of no
more curious, no more extraordinary fact than
that which I am about to describe to you. It
concerns a species of Cerceris who feeds her
family on the most sumptuous species of the
genus Buprestis. Allow me to make you
share the vivid impressions which I owe to
my study of this Hymenopteron's habits.

" In July 1839, a friend living in the coun-
try sent me two specimens of Buprestis bi-
fasciata, an insect at that time new to my
collection, informing me that a kind of Wasp
that was carrying one of these pretty Beetles
had let it fall on his coat and that, a few
moments later, a similar Wasp had dropped
another on the ground.

ipor the complete monograph, cf. Annales des sciences
naturelles: Series II., vol, xv. — Author's Note.

The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris

" In July 1840, I was visiting my friend's
house professionally and reminded him of
his capture of the year before and asked for
details of the circumstances that accompanied
it. The identity of the season and place
made me hope to make a similar capture my-
self; but the weather that day was overcast
and chilly; and therefore but few Wasps had
ventured out. Nevertheless, we made a tour
of inspection In the garden; and, seeing no-
thing coming, I thought of looking on the
ground for the homes of Burrowing Hymen-
optera.

" My attention was attracted by a sniall
heap of sand freshly thrown up and forming
a sort of tiny mole-hill. On raking it, I saw
that it masked the opening of a shaft running
some way down. With a spade we carefully
turned over the soil and soon saw the ghtter-
ing wing-cases of the coveted Buprestis lying
scattered around. Presently I discovered not
only Isolated and fragmentary wing-cases,
but a whole Buprestis, then three or four of
them, displaying their emerald and gold. I
could not believe my eyes.

" But this was only a prelude to the feast.
In the chaos of rubbish produced by the ex-
humation, a Wasp appeared and fell into my
5

The Hunting Wasps

hands: it was the kidnapper of the Buprestes,
trying to escape from among her victims. In
this burrowing insect, I recognized an old
acquaintance, a Cerceris whom I have found
hundreds of times, both in Spain and round
about Saint-Sever.

" My ambition was far from satisfied. It
was not enough for me to identify the kid-
napper and her victim: I wanted the larva,
the sole consumer of those rich provisions.
After exhausting this first vein of Buprestes,
I hastened to make fresh excavations and,
planting my spade more carefully still, I at
last succeeded in discovering two larvae which
crowned the good fortune of this campaign.
In less than an hour, I ransacked the haunts
of three Cerceres; and my booty was some
fifteen whole Buprestes, with fragments of
a still larger number. I calculated, keeping,
I believe, well within the mark, that this par-
ticular garden contained five-and-twenty nests,
making an enormous total of buried Bupre-
stes. What must it be, I thought, in places
where in a few hours I have caught on the
garlic-flowers as many as sixty Cerceres,
whose nests were apparently In the neighbour-
hood and no doubt victualled just as abun-
dantly? And so my imagination, never going
6

The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris

beyond the bounds of probabiHty, showed
me underground, within a small radius,
Buprestis fasciata by the thousand, whereas,
during the thirty years and upwards that I
have been studying the entomology of this
district, I never discovered a single one in
the open.

" Once only, perhaps twenty years ago, I
found the abdomen of this insect, together
with its wing-cases, stuck in a hole in an old
oak. This fact was illuminating. By in-
forming me that the larva of Buprestis
fasciata must live in the wood of the oak, it
completely explained why this Beetle is so
common in a district which has none but oak-
forests. As Cerceris bupresticida is rare in
the clay hills of such districts, as compared
with the sandy plains thickly planted with the
maritime pine, it became an interesting ques-
tion to know whether this Wasp, when she
inhabits the pine country, victuals her nest
in the same way as in the oak country. I had
a strong presumption that this was not the
case; and you will soon see, not without sur-
prise, what exquisite entomological discrim-
ination our Cerceris displays in her choice of
the numerous species of the genus Buprestis.

" We will therefore hasten to the pine
7

The Hunting Wasps

region to reap new delights. The field to
be explored is the garden of a country-house
standing amid forests of maritime pines.
One soon recognized the dwellings of the Cer-
ceris: they had been made solely in the main
paths, where the firm, compact soil ottered the
Burrowing H\Tnenopteron a solid founda-
tion for the construction of her subterranean
abode. I inspected some twenty, I may say,
by the sweat of my brow. It is a very labori-
ous sort of undertaking, for the nests and
consequently the provisions are not found at
less than a foot below the surface. It be-
comes necessary, therefore, lest they should
be damaged, to begin by inserting a grass-
stalk, serving as a landmark and a guide, into
the Cerceris' gallery and next to invest the
place with a square of trenches, some seven
or eight inches from the orifice or the land-
mark. The sapping must be done with a
garden-spade, so that the central clod can be
completely detached on even,- side and raised
in one piece, which we turn over on the
ground and then break up carefully. This
was the method that answered with me.

" lou would have shared our enthusiasm,
my friend, at the sight of the beautiful speci-
mens of Buprestes which this original method

The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris

of treasure-hunting disclosed, one after the
other, to our eager gaze. You should have
heard our exclamations each time that the
mine was turned upside down and new glories
stood revealed, rendered more brilliant still
by the blazing sun; or when we discovered,
here, larvae of all ages fastened to their prey,
there, the cocoons of those larvse all encrusted
with copper, bronze and emerald. I who
had been studying insects at close quarters
for three or four decades — alas! — had
never witnessed such a lovely sight nor en-
joyed so great a treat. It only needed your
presence to double our delight. Our ever-
increasing admiration was devoted by turns
to those brilliant Beetles and to the marvel-
lous discernment, the astonishing sagacity of
the Cerceris who had buried and stored them
away. Will you believe it, of more than four
hundred Beetles ^ that we dug up, there was
not one but belonged to the old genus Bupre-
stis! Not even the very smallest mistake
had been made by the wise Wasp. What can
we not learn from this intelligent Industry in
so tiny an insect! What value would not

iThe 450 Buprestes unearthed belong to the following
species: Buprestis octogtittata ; B. fasc'tata; B. pruni;
B. tarda; B. biguttata; B. micans ; B. flavomaculata; B.
chrysostigma; and B. novemmaculata. — Author's Note.
9

The Hunting Wasps

Latreille ^ have set upon this Cercerls' sup-
port of the natural method!

" We will now pass to the different
manoeuvres of the Cerceris for establishing
and victualling her nests. I have already
said that she chooses ground with a firm, com-
pact and smooth surface; I will add that this
ground must be dry and fully exposed to the
sun. She reveals in this choice an intelli-
gence, or, if you prefer, an instinct, which
one might be tempted to consider the result of
experience. Loose earth or a merely sandy
soil would doubtless be much easier to dig;
but then how is she to get an aperture that
will remain open for goods to pass in and
out, or a gallery whose walls will not con-
stantly be liable to fall in, to lose their shape,
to be blocked after a few days of rain? Her
choice therefore is both sensible and nicely
calculated.

" Our Burrowing Wasp digs her gallery
with her mandibles and her front tarsi, which
are furnished for this purpose with stiff
spikes that perform the of^ce of rakes. The
orifice must not only have the diameter of

iPierre Andre Latreille (1762-1833), a French natu-
ralist who was one of the founders of entomological
science. — Translator's Note.

IP

The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris

the miner's body : it must also be able to admit
a capture of large bulk. It is an instance
of admirable foresight. As the Cerceris goes
deeper into the earth, she casts out the rub-
bish: this forms the heap which I likened
above to a tiny mole-hill. The gallery is not
perpendicular, for then it would inevitably
become blocked up, owing either to the wind
or to other causes. Not far from where it
starts, it forms an angle ; its length is seven or
eight inches. At the end of the passage,
the industrious mother establishes the cradles
of her offspring. These consist of five se-
parate cells, independent of one another, ar-
ranged in a semicircle and hollowed into the
shape and nearly the size of an olive. Inside,
they are polished and firm. Each of them is
large enough to contain three Buprestes,
which form the usual allowance for each
larva. The mother lays an egg in the middle
of the three victims and then stops up the
gallery with earth, so that, when the vic-
tualling of the whole brood is finished, the
cells no longer communicate with the outside.
" Cerceris bupresticida must be a dexter-
ous, daring and skilful huntress. The clean-
liness and freshness of the Buprestes whom
she buries in her lair incline one to believe
II

The Hunting Wasps

that she must seize these Beetles at the mo-
ment when they are leaving the wooden gal-
leries in which their final metamorphosis has
taken place. But what inconceivable instinct
urges her, a creature that lives solely on the
nectar of flowers, to procure, in the face of
a thousand difficulties, animal food for carni-
vorous children which she will never see and
to take up her post on utterly dissimilar trees,
which conceal deep down in their trunks the
insects destined to become her prey? What
yet more inconceivable entomological judg-
ment lays down the strict law that she shall
confine herself in the choice of her victims
to a single generic group and capture speci-
mens differing greatly among themselves in
size, shape and colour? For observe, my
friend, how slight the resemblance is between
Buprestis biguttata, with a long, slender body
and a dark colour; B. octoguttata, oval-
oblong, with great patches of a beautiful yel-
low on a blue or green ground; and B. micans,
who is three or four times the size of B. bi-
guttata and glitters with a metallic lustre of
a fine golden green.

" There is another very singular fact about
the manoeuvres of our Buprestis-slayer. The
buried Buprestes, like those whom I have

12

The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris

seized in the grasp of their kidnappers, are
always deprived of any sign of hfe ; In a word,
they are decidedly dead. I was surprised to
remark that, no matter when these corpses
were dug up, they not only preserved all their
freshness of colouring, but their legs, anten-
nae, palpi and the membranes uniting the
various parts of the body remained perfectly
supple and flexible. There was no mutila-
tion, no apparent wound to be seen. One
might at first believe the reason. In the case
of the buried ones, to be due to the coolness
of the bowels of the earth. In the absence of
air and light; and, in the case of those taken
from the kidnappers, to the very recent date
of their death. But please observe that, at
the time of my explorations, after placing the
numerous exhumed Buprestes in separate
screws of paper, I often left them In their
little bags for thirty-six hours before pinning
them out. Well, notwithstanding the dry-
ness of the air and the burning July heat, I
always found the same flexibility In their
joints. Nay more: I have dissected several
of them, after that lapse of time, and their
viscera were as perfectly preserved as if I
had used my scalpel on the insects' live en-
trails. Now long experience has taught me
13

The Hunting Wasps

that, even In a Beetle of this size, when twelve
hours have passed after death in summer, the
internal organs become either dried up or
putrefied, so that it is impossible to make sure
of their form or structure. There is some
special circumstance about the Buprestes
killed by the Cerceres that saves them from
desiccation and putrefaction for a week and
perhaps two. But what is this circum-
stance? "

To explain this wonderful preservation of
the tissues which makes of an insect smitten
for many weeks past with a corpse-like inert-
ness a piece of game which does not even go
high and which, during the greatest heat of
summer, keeps as fresh as at the moment of
its capture, the able historian of the Buprestis-
huntress surmises the presence of an antiseptic
fluid, acting similarly to the preparations used
for preserving anatomical specimens. This
fluid, he suggests, can be nothing but the
poison of the Wasp, Injected into the victim's
body. A tiny drop of the venomous liquid
accompanying the sting, the needle destined
for the inoculation, would therefore serve as
a kind of brine or pickle to preserve the meat
on which the larva is to feed. But how Im-
H

The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris

mensely superior to our own pickling-pro-
cesses is that of the Wasp ! We salt, or
smoke, or tin foodstuffs which, remain fit to
eat, it is true, but which are very far indeed
from retaining the quahties which they pos-
sessed when fresh. Tins of sardines soaked
In oil, Dutch smoked herrings, codfish re-
duced to hard slabs by salt and sun: which of
these can compare with the same fish sup-
plied to the cook, so to speak, all alive and
kicking? In the case of flesh-meat, things
are even worse. Apart from salting and cu-
ring, we have nothing that can keep a piece of
meat fit for consumption for even a fairly
short period.

Nowadays, after a thousand fruitless at-
tempts in the most varied directions, we equip
special ships at great cost; and these ships,
fitted with a powerful refrigerating-plant,
bring us the flesh of sheep and oxen slaught-
ered in the South-American pampas, frozen
and preserved from decomposition by the in-
tense cold. How much more excellent is the
Cerceris' method, so swift, so Inexpensive and
so efficacious! What lessons can we not
learn from her transcendental chemistry!
With an imperceptible drop of her poison-
fluid, she straightway renders her prey incor-
15

The Hunting Wasps

ruptlble ! Incorruptible, did I say? It is
much more than that ! The game is brought
to a condition which prevents desiccation,
leaves the joints supple, keeps all the organs,
both internal and external, in their pristine
freshness and, in short, places the sacrificed
insect in a state that differs from life only by
its corpse-like immobility.

This is the theory that satisfied Leon
Dufour, as he contemplated the incompre-
hensible marvel of those dead Buprestes
proof against corruption. A preserving-
fluid, incomparably superior to aught that
human science can produce, explains the mys-
tery. He, the master, the ablest of them all,
an expert in the niceties of anatomy; he who,
with magnifying-glass and scalpel, examined
the whole entomological series, leaving no
nook or corner unexplored; he, in short, for
whom insect organism possessed no secrets
can think of nothing better than an antiseptic
fluid to give at least the semblance of an ex-
planation of a fact that leaves him con-
founded. I crave permission to emphasize
this comparison between animal instinct and
the reasoning-power of the sage in order the
better to bring to light, in due season, the
overwhelming superiority of the former.
i6

The Buprestis-hunting Cercerls

I will add but a few words to the history
of the Buprestis-hunting Cerceris. This
Wasp, who is common in the Landes, as her
historian tells us, appears to be very rarely
found in the department of Vaucluse. I have
met her only at long intervals, in autumn —
and then only isolated specimens — on the
spiny heads of the field eryngo {Eryngiiim
campestre) , in the neighbourhood either of
Avignon or of Orange and Carpentras. In
this last spot, so favourable to the work of
the Burrowing Wasps owing to its sandy soil
of Molasse formation, I have had the good
fortune, not to witness the exhumation of such
entomological treasures as Leon Dufour de-
scribes, but to find some old nests which I
attribute without hesitation to the Buprestls-
huntress, basing my opinion upon the shape
of the cocoons, the nature of the provisioning
and the presence of the Wasp in the neigh-
bourhood. These nests, dug In the heart of
a very crumbly sandstone, known in the dis-
trict as safre, were crammed with remains of
Beetles, remains easily recognized and con-
sisting of detached Wing-cases, gutted corse-
lets and entire legs. Now these broken
victuals of the larva's banquet all belonged
to a single species; and that species was once
17

The Hunting Wasps

more a Buprestis, the Double-Hned Buprestis
{Sphenoptera geminata) .^ Thus from the
west to the east of France, from the depart-
ment of the Landes to that of Vaucluse, the
Cerceris remains faithful to her favourite
prey; longitude makes no difference to her
predilections; a huntress of Buprestes among
the maritime pines of the sand-dunes along
the coast remains a huntress of Buprestes
among the olive-trees and evergreen oaks of
Provence. She changes the species according
to place, climate and vegetation, which alter
the nature of the insect population so greatly;
but she never departs from her favoured
genus, the genus Buprestis. What can her
reason be ? That is what I shall try to show.

^The Beetle known to Fabre as Sphenoptera geminata,
Uliger, is now considered identical with 5. lineola,
Herbst, which was known many years earlier. — Trans-
lator's Note.

CHAPTER II

THE GREAT CERCERIS

WITH my memory full of the prowess of
the Buprestls-huntress, I watched for
an opportunity to observe in my turn the la-
bours of the Cerceres; and I watched to such
good purpose that I ended by being success-
ful. True, the Wasp was not the one cele-
brated by Leon Dufour, with her sumptuous
victuals whose remains, when unearthed, sug-
gest the dust of some nugget broken by the
gold-miner's pick: it was a kindred species,
a gigantic brigand who contents herself with
humbler prey; in short, it was Cerccris tnher-
culata or C. major, the largest and most pow-
erful of the genus.

The last fortnight in September is the time
when our Burrowing Wasp digs her lairs and
buries in their depths the victim destined for
her grubs. The site of the home, always
selected with discrimination, is subject to
those mysterious laws which differ in different
species but are invariable throughout any one
species. Leon Dufour's Cerceris requires a
19

The Hunting Wasps

level, well-trodden, compact soil, such as that
of a path, to prevent the possibility of land-
slips and other damage which would ruin her
gallery at the first shower of rain. Ours, on
the contrary, is not very particular about the
nature of her soil, but must have that soil
vertical. With this slight architectural modi-
fication, she avoids most of the dangers that
might threaten her gallery; and consequently
she digs her burrows indifferently in a loose
and slightly clayey soil and in the soft sand
of the Molasse formation, which makes the
work of excavation much easier. The only
indispensable condition appears to be that the
earth should be dry and exposed to the sun's
rays for the best part of the day. It is there-
fore in the steep road-side banks, in the sides
of the ravines hollowed by the rains in the
sandstone that our Wasp elects to establish
her home. These conditions are common in
the neighbourhood of Carpentras, in the part
known as the Hollow Road ; and it is here that
I have observed Cerceris tuhercidata in her
largest numbers and that I gathered most of
my facts relating to her history.

The choice of this vertical site is not enough
for her: other precautions are taken to guard
against the inevitable rains of the season,
20

The Great Cerceris

which Is ah-eady far-advanced. If there be
some bit of hard sandstone projecting hke a
ledge, if there be naturally hollowed in the
ground some hole large enough to put one's
fist in, it will be under that shelter or in this
cavity that she contrives her gallery, thus
adding a natural vestibule to the edifice of her
own construction. Though no sort of com-
munism exists among them, these insects
nevertheless like to associate in small num-
bers; and I have always observed their nests
in groups of about ten at least, with the
orifices, which are usually pretty far apart,
sometimes close enough to touch one another.
On a bright, sunny day, it is wonderful to
watch the different operations of these indus-
trious miners. Some patiently remove with
their mandibles a few bits of gravel from the
bottom of the pit and push the heavy mass
outside; others, scraping the walls of the cor-
ridor with the sharp rakes of their tarsi, col-
lect a heap of rubbish which they sweep out
backwards and send streaming down the sides
of the slopes in a long thread of dust. It
was these periodical billows of sand dis-
charged from the galleries in process of build-
ing that betrayed the presence of my first
Cerceres to me and enabled me to discover

21

The Hunting Wasps

their nests. Others, either because they are
tired or because they have finished their hard
task, seem to rest and poHsh their antennae
and wings under the natural eaves that most
frequently protect their dwelling; or else they
remain motionless at the mouth of the hole,
merely showing their wide, square faces,
striped black and yellow. Others, lastly, flit
gravely humming on the neighbouring
kermes-oak-bushes, where the males, always
on the watch near the burrows in course of
construction, are not slow to join them. Cou-
ples form, often disturbed by the arrival of a
second male, who strives to supplant the
happy possessor. The humming becomes
threatening, brawls take place and often the
two males roll in the dust until one of them
acknowledges the superiority of his rival.
Near by, the female awaits the outcome of
the struggle with indifference; she finally ac-
cepts the male whom the chances of the con-
test bestow upon her; and the couple fly out
of sight in search of peace and quiet on some
distant brushwood. Here the part played
by the males ends. Only half the size of
the females and nearly as numerous, they
prowl all around the burrows, but never enter
and never take part in the laborious mining-

22

The Great Cerceris

operations nor In the perhaps even more dif-
ficult hunting-expeditions by means of which
the cells are to be stocked.

The galleries are ready in a few days,
especially as those of the previous year are
employed with the aid of a few repairs. The
other Cerceres, so far as I know, have no
fixed home, no family inheritance handed
down from generation to generation. A regu-
lar gipsy tribe, they settle singly wherever
the chances of their vagrant life may lead
them, provided that the soil suits them. But
the Great Cerceris is faithful to her house-
hold gods. The overhanging blade of sand-
stone that sheltered her predecessors is
adopted by her in her turn; she digs in the
same layer of sand wherein her forbears dug;
and, adding her own labours to those which
went before, she obtains deep retreats that
are not always easy of inspection. The dia-
meter of the galleries is wide enough to ad-
mit a man's thumb; and the insect moves
about in them readily, even when laden with
the prey which we shall see it capture. Their
direction, at first horizontal to a depth of four
to eight inches, describes a sudden bend and
dips more or less obliquely now to this side,
now to that. With the exception of the hori-

23

The Hunting Wasps

zontal part and the bend, the direction of the
rest of the tube seems to be regulated by the
difficulties presented by the ground, as is
proved by the twists and turns observed in the
more distant portion. The total length of
the shaft attains as much as eighteen inches.
At the far end of the tube are the cells, few
in number and each provisioned with five or
V/' six corpses of the Beetle order. But let us
leave these building-details and come to facts
more capable of exciting our admiration.

The victim which the Cerceris chooses
whereon to feed her grubs is a large-sized
Weevil, Cleonus ophthalmicus. We see the
kidnapper arrive heavily laden, carrying her
victim between her legs, body to body, head
to head, and plump down at some distance
from her hole, to complete the rest of the
journey without the aid of her wings. The
Wasp is now dragging her prey in her mandi-
bles up a vertical, or at least a very steep sur-
face, productive of frequent tumbles which
send kidnapper and kidnapped rolling helter-
skelter to the bottom, but incapable of dis-
couraging the indefatigable mother, who,
covered with dirt and dust, ends by diving
into the burrow with her booty, which she
has not let go for a single moment. Whereas
24

The Great Cerceris

the Cerceris finds it far from easy to walk
with such a burden, especially on ground of
this character, it is a different matter when
she is flying, which she does with a vigour
that astonishes us when we consider that the
sturdy little creature is carrying a prize al-
most as large as herself and heavier. I had
the curiosity to compare the weight of the
Cerceris and her victim : the first turned the
scale at 150 milligrammes; ^ the second aver-
aged 250 milligrammes,- or nearly double.

These figures are eloquent of the powers
of the huntress, nor did I ever weary of ad-
miring the nimbleness and ease with which
she resumed her flight, with the game between
her legs, and rose to a height at which I lost
sight of her whenever, tracked too close by
my indiscretion, she resolved to flee in order
to save her precious booty. But she did not
always fly away; and I would then succeed,
not without difficulty, lest I should hurt her,
in making her drop her prey by worrying her
and rolling her over. I would then seize the
Weevil; and the Cerceris, thus despoiled,
would hunt about here and there, enter her
lair for a moment and soon come out again

'.00528 oz. av. — Translator's Note.
*.oo88 oz. av. — Translator's Note.

25

The Hunting Wasps

to fly off on a fresh chase. In less than ten
minutes, the skilled huntress had found a new
victim, performed the murder and accom-
plished the rape, which I often allowed my-
self to turn to my own profit. Eight times in
succession I have committed the same rob-
bery at the expense of the same Wasp; eight
times, with unshaken consistency, she has
recommenced her fruitless expedition. Her
patience outwore mine; and I left her in un-
disturbed possession of her ninth capture.

By this means, or by violating cells already
provisioned, I procured close upon a hundred
Weevils; and, notwithstanding what I was
entitled to expect from what Leon Dufour
has told us of the habits of the Buprestis-
hunting Cerceris, I could not repress my sur-
prise at the sight of the singular collection
U^hich I had made. Whereas the Buprestis-
slayer, while confining herself to one genus,
passes indiscriminately from one species to
another, the more exclusive Great Cerceris
preys invariably on the same species, Cleonus
ophthalmicus. When going through my bag,
I came upon but one exception and even that
belonged to a kindred species, Cleonus alter-
nans, a species which I never saw again in
my frequent visits to the Cerceris. Later re-
26

The Great Cerceris

searches suppHed me with a second exception,
in the shape of Bothynoderus albidus; and
that is all. Is this predilection for a single
species adequately explained by the greater
flavour and succulence of the prey? Do the
grubs find in this monotonous diet juices
which suit them and which they would not
find elsewhere? I do not think so; and, if
Leon Dufour's Cerceris hunts every sort of
Buprestis without distinction, this is doubtless
because all the Buprestes possess the same
nutritive properties. But this must be gen-
erally the case with the Weevils also: their
nourishing qualities must be identical; and
then this surprising choice becomes only a
question of size and consequently of economy
of labour and time. Our Cerceris, the mam-
moth of her race, tackles the Ophthalmic Cle-
onus by preference because this Weevil is the
largest in our district and perhaps also the
commonest. But, if her favourite prey
should fail, she must fall back upon other
species, even though they be smaller, as is
proved by the two exceptions stated.

Besides, she is far from being the only one

to go hunting at the expense of the snouted

clan, the Weevils. Many other Cerceres,

according to their size, their strength and the

27

The Hunting Wasps

accidents of the chase, capture Weevils vary-
ing infinitely in genus, species, shape and di-
mensions. It has long been known that Cer-
ceris arenaria feeds her grubs on similar pro-
visions. I myself have encountered in her
lairs Sitona lineata, S. tibialis, Cneorinus his-
pidus, Brachyderes gracilis, Geonemiis flabel-
lipes and Otiorhynchus maleficus. Cerceris
aurita is known to make her booty of Otio-
rhynciis raiicus and Phynotomus piinctatus.
The larder of Cerceris Ferreri has shown me
the following: Phynotomus miiriniis, P. piinc-
tatus, Sitona lineata, Cneorinus hispidus,
Rhynchites betuleti. The last, who rolls
vine-leaves in the shape of cigars, is some-
times a superb steel-blue and more ordinarily
shines with a splendid golden copper. I have
found as many as seven of these brilliant in-
sects victualling a single cell; and the gaudl-
ness of the little subterranean heap might al-
most stand comparison with the jewels buried
by the Buprestis-huntress. Other species,
notably the weaker, go in for lesser game,
whose small size is atoned for by larger num-
bers. Thus Cerceris quadricincta stacks quite
thirty specimens of Apion gravidum in each
of her cells, without disdaining on occasion
such larger Weevils as Sitona lineata and
28

The Great Cercerls

Phynotomus murhms. A similar provision
of small species falls to the share of Cerceris
lahiata. Lastly, the smallest Cerceris in my
district, Cerceris Julii,^ chases the tiniest
Weevils, Apion gravidiim and Bruchus gra-
nar'ms, victims proportioned to the diminutive
huntress. To finish with this hst of game,
let us add that a few Cerceres observe other
gastronomic laws and raise their families on
Hymenoptera. One of these is Cerceris or-
nata. We will dismiss these tastes as for-
eign to the subject in hand.

Of the eight species then of Cerceres whose
provisions consist of Beetles, seven adopt a
diet of Weevils and one a diet of Buprestes.
For what singular reasons are the depreda-
tions of these Wasps confined to such narrow
limits? What are the motives for this ex-
clusive choice? What inward likeness can
there be between the Buprestes and the Wee-
vils, outwardly so entirely dissimilar, that
they should both become the food of kindred
carnivorous grubs? Beyond a doubt, there
are differences of flavour between this victim
and that, nutritive differences which the larvae
are well able to appreciate; but some graver

iPor a description of this species, which is new to
entomology, see the Appendix.— ^w^Z/or'i Note.
29

The Hunting Wasps

reason must overrule all such gastronomic
considerations and cause these curious predi-
lections.

After all the admirable things that have
been said by Leon Dufour upon the long and
wonderful preservation of the insects destined
for the flesh-eating larvae, it is almost need-
less to add that the Weevils, both those whom
I dug up and those whom I took from be-
tween the legs of their kidnappers, were al-
ways in a perfect state of preservation,
though deprived for ever of the power of
motion. Freshness of colour, flexibility of
the membranes and the lesser joints, normal
condition of the viscera : all these combine to
make you doubt that the lifeless body before
your eyes is really a corpse, all the more as
even with the magnifying-glass it is impossi-
ble to perceive the smallest wound; and, in
spite of yourself, you are every moment ex-
pecting to see the insect move and walk.
Nay more : in a heat which, in a few hours,
would have dried and pulverized insects that
had died an ordinary death, or in damp
weather, which would just as quickly have
made them decay and go mouldy, I have kept
the same specimens, both in glass tubes and
paper bags, for more than a month, without
30

The Great Cerceris

precautions of any kind; and, incredible
though it may sound, after this enormous
lapse of time the viscera had lost none of
their freshness and dissection was as easily
performed as though I were operating on a
live insect. No, in the presence of such facts,
we cannot speak of the action of an antiseptic
and believe in a real death: life is still there,
latent, passive life, the life of a vegetable.
It alone, resisting yet a little while longer the
all-conquering chemical forces, can thus pre-
serve the structure from decomposition.
Life is still there, except for movement; and
we have before our eyes a marvel such as
chloroform or ether might produce, a marvel
which owes its origin to the mysterious laws
of the nervous system.

The functions of this vegetative life are no
doubt enfeebled and disturbed; but at any
rate they are exercised in a lethargic fashion.
I have as a proof the evacuation performed
by the Weevils normally and at Intervals
during the first week of this deep slumber,
which will be followed by no awakening and
which nevertheless is not yet death. It does
not cease until the intestines are emptied of
their contents, as shown by autopsy. Nor
do the faint glimmers of life which the insect

The Hunting Wasps

still manifests stop at that; and, though Irri-
tability of the organs seems annihilated for
good, I have nevertheless succeeded in arous-
ing slight signs of it. Having placed some
recently exhumed and absolutely motionless
Weevils in a bottle containing sawdust moist-
ened with a few drops of benzine, I was not a
little astonished to see their legs and antennae
moving a quarter of an hour later. For a
moment I thought that I could recall them to
life. Vain hope 1 Those movements, the
last traces of a susceptibility about to be ex-
tinguished, soon cease and cannot be excited
a second time. I have tried this experiment
in some cases a few hours after the murderous
blow, in others as late as three or four days
after and always with the same success.
Still, the movement is feeble in proportion to
the time that has elapsed since the fatal
stroke. It always spreads from front to
back: the antennae first wave slowly to and
fro; then the front tarsi tremble and take
part in the oscillation; next the tarsi of the
second pair of legs and lastly those of the
third pair hasten to do likewise. Once move-
ment sets in, these different appendages exe-
cute their vibrations without any order, until
the whole relapses into immobility, which
32

The Great Cerceris

happens more or less quickly. Unless the
blow has been dealt quite recently, the motion
of the tarsi extends no farther and the legs
remain still.

Ten days after an attack, I was unable to
obtain the least vestige of susceptibility by
the above process; and I then had recourse to
the Voltaic battery. This method is more
powerful and provokes muscular contractions
and movements where the benzine-vapour
fails. We have only therefore to apply the
current of one or two Bunsen cells through
the conductors of some slender needles.
Thrusting the point of one under the farthest
ring of the abdomen and the point of the
other under the neck, we obtain, each time the
current is established, not only a quivering of
the tarsi, but a strong reflexion of the legs,
which draw up under the abdomen and then
straighten out when the current is turned off.
These flutterings, which are very energetic
during the first few days, gradually diminish
in intensity and appear no more after a cer-
tain time. On the tenth day, I have still ob-
tained perceptible movements; on the fif-
teenth day, the battery was powerless to pro-
voke them, despite the suppleness of the limbs
and the freshness of the viscera. To effect
33

The Hunting Wasps

a comparison, I subjected to the action of the
v/ Vokaic pile Beetles really dead, Cellar-
beetles, Saperdae and Lamiae, asphyxiated
with benzine or sulphuric acid gas. Two
hours at most after the asphyxiation, it was
impossible for me to provoke the movements
so easily obtained in Weevils who have al-
ready for several days been In that curious
Intermediate state between life and death into
which their formidable enemy plunges them.
All these facts are opposed to the Idea of
something completely dead, to the theory
that we have here a veritable corpse which
has become incorruptible by the action of a
preservative fluid. They can be explained
only by admitting that the insect is smitten in
the very origin and mainspring of its move-
ments; that its susceptibility, suddenly be-
numbed, dies out slowly, while the more te-
nacious vegetative functions die still more
slowly and keep the Intestines in a state of
preservation for the space of time required
by the larvae.

The particular thing which It was most
important to ascertain was the manner in
which the murder is committed. It is quite
evident that the chief part In this must be
played by the Cerceris' venom-laden sting.
34

The Great Cerceris

But where and how does It enter the Weevil's
body, which is covered with a hard and well-
riveted cuirass? In the various Insects
pierced by the assassin's dart, nothing, even
under the magnlfying-glass, betrayed her
method. It became a matter, therefore, of
discovering the murderous manoeuvres of the
Wasp by direct observation, a problem whose
difficulties had made Leon Dufour recoil and
whose solution seemed to me for a time undis-
coverable. I tried, however, and had the
satisfaction of succeeding, though not with-
out some preliminary groping.

When flying from their caverns. Intent
upon the chase, the Cerceres would take
any direction indifferently, turning now this
way, now that; and they would come back,
laden with their prey, from all quar-
ters. Every part of the neighbourhood
must therefore have been explored with-
out distinction; but, as the huntresses were
hardly more than ten minutes In coming
and going, the radius worked could not be
one of great extent, especially when we allow
for the time necessary for the Insect to dis-
cover its prey, to attack It and to reduce It to
an Inert mass. I therefore set myself to
inspect the adjacent ground with every pos-
35

The Hunting Wasps

sible attention, In the hope of finding a few
Cerceres engaged in hunting. An afternoon
devoted to this thankless task ended by per-
suading me of the futihty of my quest and of
the small chance which I had of catching In
the act a few scarce huntresses, scattered here
and there and soon lost to view through the
swiftness of their flight, especially on diflicult
ground, thickly planted with vines and olive-
trees. I abandoned the attempt.

By myself bringing live Weevils Into the
vicinity of the nests, might I not tempt the
Cerceres with a victim all ready to hand and
thus witness the desired tragedy? The Idea
seemed a good one; and the very next morn-
ing I went off In search of live specimens of
Cleonus ophthalmicus. Vineyards, cornfields,
lucerne-crops, hedges, stone-heaps, road-
sides: I visited and inspected one and all;
and, after two mortal days of minute investi-
gation, I was the possessor — dare I say
it? — I was the possessor of three Weevils,
flayed, covered with dust, minus antennae or
tarsi, maimed veterans whom the Cerceres
would perhaps refuse to look at! Many
years have passed since the days of that
fevered quest when, bathed In sweat, I made
those wild expeditions, all for a Weevil; and,
36

The Great Cerceris

despite my almost daily entomological ex-
plorations, I am still ignorant how and where
the celebrated Cleonus lives, though I meet
him occasionally, roaming on the edge of the
paths. O wonderful power of instinct ! In
the selfsame places and in a mere fraction of
time, our Wasps would have found by the
hundred these insects undiscoverable by man;
and they would have found them fresh and
glossy, doubtless just issued from their
nymphal cocoons!

No matter, let us see what we can do with
my pitiful bag. A Cerceris has just entered
her gallery with her usual prey; before she
comes out again for a new expedition, I place
a Weevil a few inches from the hole. The
insect moves about; when it strays too far, I
restore it to its position. At last, the
Cerceris shows her wide face and emerges
from the hole; my heart beats with excite-
ment. The Wasp stalks about the ap-
proaches to her home for a few moments,
sees the Weevil, brushes against him, turns
round, passes several times over his back and
flies away without honouring my capture with
a touch of her mandibles: the capture which
I was at such pains to acquire. I am con-
founded, I am floored. Fresh attempts at
37

The Hunting Wasps

other holes lead to fresh disappointments.
Clearly, these dainty sportswomen will have
none of the game which I offer them. Per-
haps they find it uninteresting, not fresh
enough. Perhaps, by taking it in my fingers,
I have given it some odour which they dis-
like. With these epicures, a mere alien touch
is enough to produce disgust.

Should I be more fortunate if I obliged
the Cerceris to use her sting in self-defence?
I enclosed a Cerceris and a Cleonus in the
same bottle and stirred them up by shaking
it. The Wasp, with her sensitive nature,
was more impressed than the other prisoner,
with his dull and clumsy organization; she
thought of flight, not of attack. The very
parts were interchanged: the Weevil, becom-
ing the aggressor, at times seized with his
snout a leg of his mortal enemy, who was so
greatly overcome with fear that she did not
even seek to defend herself. I was at the
end of my resources; yet my wish to behold
the catastrophe was but increased by the dif-
ficulties already experienced. Well, I would
try again.

A bright idea flashed across my mind,
entering so naturally into the very heart of
the question that it brought hope in its train.
38

The Great Cerceris

Yes, that must be it; the thing was bound to
succeed. I must offer my scorned game to
the Cerceris in the heat of the chase. Then,
carried away by her absorbing preoccupation,
she would not perceive its imperfections.

I have already said that, on her return
from hunting, the Cerceris alights at the foot
of the slope, at some distance from the hole,
whither she laboriously drags her prey. It
became a matter therefore of robbing her of
her victim by drawing it away by one foot
with my forceps and at once throwing her
the live Weevil in exchange. The trick suc-
ceeded to perfection. As soon as the
Cerceris felt her prey slip from under her
belly and escape her, she tapped the ground
impatiently with her feet, turned round and,
perceiving the Weevil that had taken the
place of her own, flung herself upon him and
clasped him in her legs to carry him away.
But she soon became aware that her prey was
alive; and now the tragedy began, only to
end with inconceivable rapidity. The Wasp
faced her victim and, gripping its snout with
her powerful mandibles, soon had it at her
mercy. Then, while the Weevil reared on
his six legs, the other pressed her forefeet vio-
lently on his back, as if to force open some
39

The Hunting Wasps

ventral joint. I next saw the assassin's abdo-
men shp under the Cleonus' belly, bend into a
curve and dart its poisoned lancet briskly,
two or three times, into the joint of the pro-
thorax, between the first and second pairs of
legs. All was over in a moment. Without
the least convulsive movement, without any
of that stretching of the limbs which accom-
panies an animal's death, the victim fell
motionless for all time, as though struck by
lightning. It was terribly and at the same
time wonderfully quick. The murderess
next turned the body on its back, placed her-
self belly to belly with It, with her legs on
either side, clasped it and flew away. Thrice
over I renewed the experiment, with my three
Weevils; and the process never varied.

Of course I gave the Cerceris back her first
prey each time and withdrew my own Cleonus
to examine him at my leisure. The in-
spection but confirmed my high opinion of
the assassin's formidable skill. It was im-
possible to perceive the least sign of a wound,
the slightest flow of vital fluid at the point
attacked. But what was most striking —
and justly so — was the prompt and com-
plete annihilation of all movement. Im-
mediately after the murder, I sought in vain
40

The Great Cerceris

for traces of Irritability of the organs in the
three Weevils dispatched before my eyes:
those traces were never revealed, whether I
pinched or pricked the insect; and it required
the artificial means described above to pro-
voke them. Thus, these powerful Cleoni,
which, if pierced alive with a pin and fixed
on the Insect-collector's fatal sheet of cork,
would have kicked and struggled for days and
weeks, nay, for whole months on end.
Instantly lose all power of movement from
the effect of a tiny prick which Inoculates
them with an invisible drop of venom. ^ But
chemistry has no poison so potent in so minute
a dose; prussic acid would hardly produce
those effects, if Indeed It can produce them at
all. It is not to toxology then, surely, but to
physiology and anatomy that we must turn to
grasp the cause of this Instantaneous an-
nihilation; and to understand these marvel-
lous happenings we must consider not so much
the Intense strength of the poison Injected as
the Importance of the organ Injured.

What Is there then at the point where the
sting enters?

41

CHAPTER III

A SCIENTIFIC SLAUGHTERER

^ I ''HE Wasp has told us part of her secret
-*■ by showing us the spot which her sting
touches. Does this solve the question?
Not yet, nor by a long way. Let us go back
for a moment, forget what the insect has just
taught us and, in our turn, set ourselves the
problem of the Cerceris. The problem is
this: to store underground, in a cell, a big
enough pile of game to feed the larva which
will be hatched from the egg laid on the heap.
At first sight, this victualling seems simple
enough; but a little reflection shows that It is
attended by very grave difficulties. Our own
game, for instance, is brought down by a shot
from a gun ; it is killed with horrible wounds.
The Wasp has refinements of taste unknown
to us: she must have the prey intact, with all
its elegance of form and colouring, no broken
limbs, no gaping wounds, no hideous disem-
bowelling. Her victim has all the freshness
of the live insect; It retains, without the loss
of a single speck, that fine tinted bloom which
42

A Scientific Slaughterer

is destroyed by the mere contact of our
fingers. If the insect were dead, if it were
really a corpse, how great would be our dif-
ficulty in obtaining a like result! Each of us
can kill an insect by brutally crushing it under
foot; but to kill It neatly, with no sign of
injury, Is not an easy operation, is not an
operation which any one can perform. How
many would be utterly perplexed if they were
called upon to kill, then and there, without
crushing it, a hardy little insect which, even
when you cut off Its head, goes on struggling
for a long time after ! One has to be a prac-
tical entomologist to think of the various
ways of asphyxiation; and even here success
would be doubtful with primitive methods,
such as the fumes of benzine or burning
sulphur. In this unwholesome atmosphere,
the insect flounders about too long and loses
its glory. We must have recourse to more
heroic measures, such as the terrible exhala-
tions of prussic acid emanating slowly from
strips of paper steeped in cyanide of potas-
sium, or else and better still, as being free
from " danger to the insect-hunter, the all-
powerful fumes of bisulphide of carbon. It
is quite an art, you see — and an art which
has to call to its aid the formidable arsenal
43

The Hunting Wasps

of chemistry — to kill an insect neatly, to do
what the Cerceris performs so quickly and so
prettily, that is, if we are stupid enough to
assume that her captured prey actually be-
comes a corpse.

A corpse ! But that is by no means the
fare prescribed for the larvae, those little
ogres clamouring for fresh meat, whom game
ever so slightly high would inspire with insur-
mountable disgust. They want meat killed
that day, with no suspicion of taint, the first
sign of corruption. Nevertheless, the prey
cannot be packed into the cell alive, as we
pack the cattle destined to furnish fresh meat
for the passengers and crew of a ship.
What indeed would become of the delicate
egg laid among live provisions? What
would become of the feeble larva, a tiny grub
which the least touch would bruise, among
lusty Beetles who would go on kicking for
weeks with their long, spurred legs? We
need here two things which seem utterly ir-
reconcilable : the immobility of death com-
bined with the sweet wholesomeness of life.
Before such a dietetic problem, the most
deeply read layman would stand powerless;
the practical entomologist himself would own
44

A Scientific Slaughterer

himself beaten. The Cerceris' larder would
defy their reasoning-power.

Let us then suppose an academy of ana-
tomists and physiologists; let us imagine a
congress at which the question is raised
among such men as Flourens,^ Magendie ^
and Claude Bernard.^ If we want to obtain
both complete immobility of the victim and
also its preservation during a long period
without going bad, the simplest- and most
natural idea which comes to us is that of
tinned foods. Our congress would suggest
the use of some preserving liquid, just as the
famous Landes scientist did when he was con-
fronted with his Buprestes; they would at-
tribute exquisite antiseptic virtues to the
Wasp's poison-fluid; but these strange virtues
would still remain to be proved. And per-
haps the conclusion of that learned assembly,

^Marie Jean Pierre Flourens (1794-1867), the cele-
brated French physiologist, appointed perpetual secre-
tary of the Academy of Science in 1833 and a member of
the French Academy. — Translator's Note.

^Frangois Magendie (1783-1855), professor of anatomy
in the College de France, noted for his experiments on
the physiolog>' of the nerves. — Translator's Note.

^Claude Bernard (1813-1878), another distinguished
French physiologist and perhaps the most famous repre-
sentative of experimental science in the nineteenth cen-
tury. — Translator's Note.

45

The Hunting Wasps

like the conclusion of the sage of the Landes,
would be a purely gratuitous supposition
which would simply substitute one unknown
quantity for another, giving us in the place of
the mystery of those uncorrupted tissues the
mystery of that wonderful preserving fluid.

If we insist, if we point out that the larvae
need, not preserved food, which could never
possess the properties of still palpitating
flesh, but something that shall be just as if it
were live prey, despite Its complete Inertia,
the learned congress, after due reflection, will
fix on paralysis;

" Yes, that's it, of course ! The creature
must be paralysed; It must be deprived of
movement, without being deprived of life."

There is only one way of achieving this
result: to injure, cut or destroy the insect's
nervous system in one or more skilfully-
selected places. But, even at that stage, if
left in hands unfamiliar with the anatomical
secrets of a delicate organism, the question
would not have advanced much farther.
What in fact Is the disposition of this nervous
system which has to be smitten If we would
paralyse the Insect without at the same time
killing It? And, first of all, where is it? In
the head, no doubt, and down the back, like
46

A Scientific Slaughterer

the brain and the spinal marrow of the higher
animals.

" You make a grave mistake," our con-
gress would say. " The insect is like an in-
verted animal, walking on its back; that is to
say, instead of having the spinal marrow on
the top, it has it below, along the breast and
the belly. The operation on the insect to be
paralysed must therefore be performed on
the lower surface and on that surface alone."

This difficulty once removed, another
arises, equally serious in a different way.
Armed with his scalpel, the anatomist can
direct the point of his instrument wherever he
thinks fit, in spite of obstacles, for these he
can eliminate. The Wasp, on the contrary,
has no choice. Her victim is a Beetle in his
stout coat of mail; her lancet is her sting, an
extremely dehcate weapon which would
inevitably be stopped by the horny armour.
Only a few points are accessible to the fragile
implernent, namely, the joints, which are pro-
tected merely by an unresisting membrane.
Moreover, the joints of the limbs, though
vulnerable, do not in the least fulfil the
desired conditions, for the utmost that could
be obtained by means of them would be a
partial paralysis and not a general paralysis
47

The Hunting Wasps

affecting the whole of the motor organism.
Without a prolonged struggle, which might
be fatal to the patient, without repeated
operations, which, if too numerous, might
jeopardize the Beetle's life, the Wasp has,
if possible, to suppress all power of move-
ment at one blow. It Is essential therefore
that she should aim her sting at the nervous
centres, the seat of the motor faculties,
whence radiate the nerves scattered over the
several organs of movement. Now these
sources of locomotion, these nervous centres,
consist of a certain number of nuclei or
ganglia, more numerous in the larva, less
numerous In the perfect Insect and arranged
along the median line of the lower surface in
a string of beads more or less distant one
from the other and connected by a double
ribbon of the nerve-substance. In all the
insects in the perfect state, the so-called
thoracic ganglia, that Is to say, those which
supply nerves to the wings and legs and go-
vern their movements, are three In number.
These are the points to be struck. If their
action can be destroyed, no matter how, the
power of movement will be destroyed like-
wise.

There are two methods of reaching these
48

A Scientific Slaughterer

motor centres with the Wasp's feeble instru-
ment, the sting: through the joint between the
neck and the corselet; and through the joint
between the corselet and the rest of the
thorax, in short, between the first and second
pair of legs. The way through the joint of
the neck is hardly suitable : it is too far from
the ganglia, which are near the base of the
legs which they endow with movement. It
is at the other point and there alone that the
blow must be struck. That would be the
opinion of the academy in which the Claude
Bernards were treating the question in the
light of their profound knowledge. And it
is here, just here, between the first and second
pair of legs, on the median line of the lower
surface, that the Wasp inserts her dirk. By
what expert instinct is she inspired?

To select, as the spot wherein to drive her
sting, the one vulnerable point, the point
which none save a physiologist versed in
insect anatomy could determine beforehand:
even that is far from being enough. The
Wasp has a much greater difficulty to sur-
mount; and she surmounts it with an ease that
stupefies us. The nerve-centres governing
the locomotory organs of the insect are, we
were saying, three in number. They are
49

The Hunting Wasps

more or less distant from one another; some-
times, but rarely, they are close together.
Altogether they possess a certain inde-
pendence of action, so that an injury done
to any one of them induces, at any
rate for the moment, the paralysis only
of the limbs that correspond with it, with-
out affecting the other ganglia and the
limbs which they control. To strike in
succession these three motor centres, each
farther back than the one before it, and to do
so between the first and second pair of legs
seems an impracticable operation for such a
weapon as the Wasp's sting, which is too
short and is besides very difficult to guide
under such conditions. It is true that certain
Beetles have the three ganglia of the thorax
very near together, almost touching, while
others have the last tv/o completely united,
soldered, welded together. It is also a
recognized fact that, in proportion as the dif-
ferent nervous nuclei tend towards a closer
combination and greater centralization, the
characteristic functions of animal nature be-
come more perfect and consequently, alas,
more vulnerable. Here we have the prey
which the Cerceris really needs. Those
50

A Scientific Slaughterer

Beetles with motor centres brought close
together or even gathered into a common
mass, making them mutually dependent on
one another, will be at the same instant para-
lysed with a single stroke of the dagger; or,
if several strokes be needed, the ganglia to be
stung will at any rate all be there, collected
under the point of the dart.

Which Beetles are they then that constitute
a prey so eminently convenient for paraly-
sing? That is the question. The lofty
science of a Claude Bernard, concerning itself
only with the fundamental generalities of
organism and life, would not suffice here; it
could never tell us how to make this entomo-
logical selection. I appeal to any physiolo-
gist under whose eyes these lines may come.
Without referring to his library, could he
name the Beetles in whom that centralization
of the nervous system occurs; and, even with
the aid of his books, would he at once know
where to find the desired information? The
fact is that, with these minute details, we are
now entering the domain of the specialist; we
are leaving the public road for the path
known to the few.

I find the necessary information in M.
51

The Hunting Wasps

Emile Blanchard's fine work on the nervous
system of the Coleoptera.^ I see there that
this centraHzation of the nervous system is
the prerogative, in the first place, of the
Scarabaeidae, or Chafers; but most of these
are too large: the Cerceris could perhaps
neither attack them nor carry them away; be-
sides, many of them live in the midst of
ordure where the Wasp, herself so cleanly,
would refuse to go in search of them.
Motor centres very close together are found
also in the Histers, who live on carrion and
dung, in an atmosphere of loathsome smells,
and who must therefore be eliminated; in the
Scolyti, who are too small; and lastly in the
Buprestes and the Weevils.

What an unexpected light amid the original
darkness of the problem ! Among the im-
mense number of Beetles whereon the
Cerceres might seem able to prey, only two
groups, the Weevils and the Buprestes, fulfil
the indispensable conditions. They live far
removed from stench and filth, two qualities
perhaps invincibly repugnant to the dainty
huntress; their numerous representatives vary
considerably in size, in much the same way as

^/Jnnales des sciences naturelles, Series III., vol. v. —
duthor's Note.

52

A Scientific Slaughterer

their kidnappers, who can thus pick and
choose the victims that suit them; they are far
more vulnerable than any of the others at
the one point where the Wasp's dart can pene-
trate, for at this point the motor centres of
the feet and wings are crowded together, all
easily accessible to the sting. At this point,
in the Weevils, the three thoracic ganglia are
very close together, the last two even touch-
ing; at the same point, In the Buprestes, the
second and third are mingled In one large
mass, very near the first. And it Is just
Buprestes and Weevils that we see hunted, to
the absolute exclusion of all other game, by
the eight species of Cerceres whose pro-
visions have been found to consist of Beetles !
A certain Inward resemblance, that Is to say,
the centralization of the nervous system, must
therefore be the reason why the lairs of the
different Cerceres are crammed with victims
bearing no outward resemblance whatever.
The most exalted knowledge could make
no more judicious choice than this, by which
so great a collection of difficulties Is mag-
nificently solved that we wonder If we be
not the dupes of some Involuntary illusion,
whether preconceived theoretic notions have
not obscured the actual facts, whether. In
53

The Hunting Wasps

short, the pen have not described imaginary
marvels. No scientific conckision is firmly
established until it has received confirmation
by means of practical tests, carried out in
every variety of way. We will therefore
subject to experimental proof the physiolo-
gical operation of which the Great Cerceris
has just apprised us. If it be possible to
obtain artificially what the Wasp obtains with
her sting, namely, the abolition of movement
and the continued preservation of the patient
in a perfectly fresh condition; If it be possible
to work this wonder with the Beetles hunted
by the Cerceris, or with those presenting a
similar nervous centralization, while we are
unsuccessful with Beetles whose ganglia are
far apart, then we shall be bound to admit,
however hard to please we may be in the
matter of tests, that in the unconscious in-
spiration of her instinct the Wasp has all the
resources of consummate art. Let us see
what experiment has to tell us.

The operating-method is of the simplest.
It is a question of taking a needle, or, better
and more convenient, the point of a fine steel
nib and Introducing a tiny drop of some cor-
rosive fluid Into the thoracic motor centres,
by pricking the insect slightly at the junction
54

A Scientific Slaughterer

of the prothorax, behind the first pair of feet.
The fluid which I employ is ammonia; but
obviously any other liquid as powerful in its
action would produce the same results. The
nib being charged with ammonia as it might
be with a very small drop of ink, I give
the prick. The effects obtained differ enor-
mously, according to whether we experiment
upon species whose thoracic ganglia are close
together or upon species in which those same
ganglia are far apart. In the first class, my
experiments were made on Dung-beetles: the
Sacred Scarab ^ and the Wide-necked Scarab;
on Buprestes: the Bronze Buprestis; lastly,
on Weevils, in particular on the Cleonus
hunted by the heroine of this essay. In the
second class, I experimented on Ground-
beetles : Carabi, Procrustes, Chlaenii, Spho-
dri, Nebrice; on Longicornes: Saperdae and
Lamiae ; on Melasoma-beetles : Cellar-beetles,
Scauri, Asidae.

In the Scarabaei, the Buprestes and the
Weevils, the effect is instantaneous: all move-

^For the Sacred Scarab, or Sacred Beetle, cf. Insect
Life, by J. H. Fabre, translated by the author of
Mademoiselle Mori: chaps, i. and ii.; and The Life and
Love of the Insect, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alex-
ander Teixelra de Mattos: chaps, i. to iv. — Translator's
Note.

55

The Hunting Wasps

ment ceases suddenly, without convulsions,
so soon as the fatal drop has touched the
nerve-centres. The Cercerls' own sting pro-
duces no more speedy annihilation. There
is nothing more striking than this immediate
immobility provoked in a powerful Sacred
Beetle.

But this is not the only resemblance be-
tween the effects produced by the Wasp's
sting and those resulting from the nib poi-
soned with ammonia. The Scarabs, Bu-
prestes and Beetles artificially stung, notwith-
standing their complete immobility, preserve
for three weeks, a month or even two the
perfect flexibility of all their joints and the
normal freshness of their internal organs.
Evacuation takes place with them during the
first days as in the normal state; and move-
ments can be induced by the electric battery.
In a word, they behave exactly like the Bee-
tles immolated by the Cerceris; there is abso-
lute identity between the state into which the
kidnapper puts her victims and that which we
produce at will by injuring the thoracic nerve-
centres with ammonia. Now, as it is im-
possible to attribute the perfect preservation
of the insect for so long a period to the tiny
drop injected, we must reject altogether any
56

A Scientific Slaughterer

notion of an antiseptic fluid and admit that,
despite its perfect immobility, the insect is
not really dead, that it still retains a glimmer
of life, which for some time to come keeps
the organs in their normal condition of fresh-
ness, but gradually fades out, until at last
it leaves them the prey of corruption. Be-
sides, in some cases, the ammonia does not
produce complete annihilation of movement
except in the Insect's legs; and then, as the
deleterious action of the liquid has doubtless
not extended far enough, the antennae pre-
serve a remnant of mobility and we see the
Insect, even more than a month after the
Inoculation, draw them back quickly at the
least touch: a convincing proof that life has
not entirely deserted the Inanimate body.
This movement of the antennae Is also not
uncommon In the Weevils wounded by the
Cercerls.

In every case, the Injection of ammonia at
once stops all movement in Scarabs, Weevils
and Buprestes; but we do not always succeed
In reducing the Insect to the condition just
described. If the wound be too deep. If the
drop administered be too strong, the victim
really dies; and. In two or three days' time,
we have nothing but a putrid body before us.
57

The Hunting Wasps

If the prick, on the other hand, be too slight,
the insect, after a longer or shorter period
of deep torpor, comes to itself and at least
partially recovers its power of motion. The
assailant herself may sometimes operate
clumsily, just like man, for I have noticed
this sort of resurrection in a victim stung by
the dart of a Digger-wasp. The Yellow-
winged Sphex, whose story will shortly oc-
cupy our attention, stacks her lairs with
young Crickets first pricked with her poi-
soned lancet. I have extracted from one of
those lairs three poor Crickets whose ex-
treme limpness would, in any other circum-
stances, have denoted death. But here
again death was only apparent. Placed in
a flask, these Crickets kept in very good con-
dition, perfectly motionless all the time, for
nearly three weeks. In the end, two went
mouldy and the third partly revived, that
is to say, he recovered the power of motion
in his antennae, in his mouth-parts and, what
is more remarkable, in his first two pairs of
legs. If the Wasp's skill sometimes fails to
benumb the victim permanently, one can
hardly ej^pect invariable success from man's
rough experiments.

In the Beetles of the second class, that is
58

A Scientific Slaughterer

to say, those whose thoracic ganglia are some
distance apart, the effect of the ammonia is
quite different. The least vulnerable are the
Ground-beetles. A puncture which would
have produced instant annihilation of move-
ment in a large Sacred Beetle produces no-
thing but violent and disordered convulsions
in the medium-sized Ground-Beetles, be they
Chlaenlus, Nebria or Calathus. Little by
little, the insect quiets down and, after a few
hours' rest, its usual movements are resumed
as though it had met with no accident what-
ever. If we repeat the experiment on the
same specimen, twice, thrice or four times
over, the results remain the same, until the
wound becomes too serious and the insect
actually dies, as is proved by its desiccation
and putrefaction, which follows soon after.
The Melasoma-beetlesandLongicornes are
more sensitive to the action of the ammonia.
The injection of the corrosive drop pretty
quickly renders them motionless; and, after
a few convulsions, the insect seems dead.
But this paralysis, which would have per-
sisted in the Dung-beetles, the Weevils and
the Buprestes, is only temporary here:
within a day, motion Is once more apparent,
as energetic as ever. It is only when the
59

The Hunting Wasps

dose of ammonia is of a certain strength that
the movements fail to reappear; but then the
insect is dead, quite dead, for it soon begins
to decay. It is impossible therefore to pro-
duce complete and persistent paralysis in
Beetles that have their ganglia far apart by
the same measures which proved so effica-
cious in Beetles with ganglia close together:
the utmost that we can obtain is a temporary
paralysis whose effects pass off within a day.
The demonstration is conclusive ; the Cer-
ceres that prey on Beetles conform in their
selection to what could be taught only
by the most learned physiologists and the
finest anatomists. One would vainly strive
to see no more in this than casual co-
incidences : it is not in chance that we shall
find the key to such harmonies as these.

60

CHAPTER IV

THE YELLOW-WINGED SPHEX

T TNDER their powerful armour, which no
^ dart can penetrate, the insects of the
Beetle tribe offer but a single vulnerable spot
to the sting-bearing enemy. This defect in
the breastplate is known to the murderess,
who drives in her poisoned dagger there and
at one blow strikes the three motor centres,
for she selects her victims from the Weevil
and Buprestis families, whose nervous sys-
tem is centralized to the requisite degree.
But what will happen when the prey is an
insect clad not in mail but in a soft skin,
which the Wasp can stab here or there in-
differently, in any part of the body that
chances to be exposed? In that case are the
blows still delivered scientifically? Like the
assassin who strikes at the heart to cut short
the dangerous resistance of his victim, does
the assailant follow the tactics of the Cer-
ceres and wound the motor ganglia by prefer-
ence? If that be so, then what happens
when these ganglia are some distance apart
6i

The Hunting Wasps

and so independent in their action that pa-
ralysis of one is not necessarily followed by
paralysis of the others? These questions
will be answered by the story of a Cricket-
huntress, the Yellow-winged Sphex {Sphex
flavipennis) .

It is at the end of July that the Yellow-
winged Sphex tears the cocoon that has pro-
tected her until then and flies out of her sub-
terranean cradle. During the whole of
August, she is frequently seen flitting, in
search of some drop of honey, around the
spiked heads of the field eryngo, the common-
est of the hardy plants that brave the heat of
the dog-days in this month. But this careless
life does not last long, for by the beginning of
September the Sphex is at her arduous task
as a sapper and huntress. She generally se-
lects some small plateau, on the high banks
by the side of the roads, wherein to establish
her home, provided that she find two indis-
pensable things there: a sandy soil, easy to
dig; and sunshine. No other precaution is
taken to protect the dwelling against the au-
tumn rains or winter frosts. A horizontal
site, unprotected, lashed by the rain and the
winds, suits her perfectly, on condition, how-
ever, that it is exposed to the sun. And,
62

The Yellow-winged Sphex

when a heavy shower comes In the middle of
her mining, it is pitiful next day to see the
half-built galleries in ruins, choked with sand
and finally abandoned by their engineers.

The Sphex seldom practises her industry
alone; the site selected is usually exploited by
small bands of ten or twenty sappers or more.
One must have spent days in contemplating
one of these villages to form any idea of
the restless activity, the spasmodic haste, the
abrupt movements of those hard-working
miners. The soil is rapidly attacked with
the rakes of the fore-feet: canis instar, as
Linnaeus says. No mischievous puppy dis-
plays more energy in digging up the ground.
At the same time, each worker sings her glad
ditty, which consists of a shrill and strident
noise, constantly broken off and modulated
by the vibrations of the wings and thorax.
One would think that they were a troop of
merry companions encouraging one another
in their work with a cadenced rhythm.
Meanwhile, the sand flies, falling in a fine
dust on their quivering wings; and the too-
bulky gravel, removed bit by bit, rolls far
away from the workyard. If a piece seems
too heavy to be moved, the insect gets up
steam with a shrill note which reminds one

The Hunting Wasgs

oi the woodman's " Hoo! " Under the re-
doubled efforts of tarsi and mandibles, the
cave soon takes shape; the insect is already
able to dive into it bodily. We then see a
lively alternation of forward movements, to
loosen new materials, and backward move-
ments, to sweep the rubbish outside. In this
constant hurrying to and fro, the Sphex does
not walk, she darts as though shot from a
spring; she bounds with throbbing abdomen
and quivering antennae, her whole body, in
short, animated with a musical vibration.
The miner is now out of sight; but we still
hear underground her untiring song, while
at intervals we catch a glimpse of her hind-
legs, pushing a torrent of sand backwards to
the mouth of the burrow. From time to
time, the Sphex interrupts her subterranean
labours, either to come and dust herself in
the sun, to rid herself of the grains of sand
which, slipping into her delicate joints, might
hamper the liberty of her movements, or else
to reconnoitre the neighbourhood. Despite
these interruptions, which for that matter do
not last long, the gallery is dug in the space
of a few hours; and the Sphex comes to her
threshold to chant her triumph and give the
finishing polish to her work by removing
64

The Yellow-winged Sphex

some unevenness and carrying away a speck
or two of earth whose drawbacks are per-
ceptible to her discerning eye alone.

Of the numerous tribes of Sphex-wasps
which I have visited, one in particular re-
mains fixed in my memory because of its
curious dv/elling-place. On the edge of a
high-road were some small heaps of mud,
taken from the ditches by the road-mender's
shovel. One of these heaps, long ago dried
in the sun, formed a cone-shaped mound,
resembling a large sugar-loaf twenty inches
high. The site seemed to have attracted the
Wasps, who had established themselves there
in a more populous colony than I have ever
since beheld. The cone of dry mud was
riddled from top to bottom with burrows,
which gave it the appearance of an enormous
sponge. On every storey there was a fever-
ish animation, a busy coming and going which
reminded one of the scenes in some great
yard when the work is urgent. Crickets
were being dragged by the antennae up the
slopes of the conical city; victuals were being
stored in the larders of the cells; dust was
pouring from the galleries in process of ex-
cavation by the miners; grimy faces appeared
at intervals at the mouths of the tunnels;
65

The Hunting Wasps

there were constant exits and constant en-
trances; and now and again a Sphex, in her
brief intervals of leisure, would climb to the
top of the cone, perhaps to cast a look of
satisfaction from this belvedere over the
works in general. What a spectacle to
tempt me, to make me long to carry the
whole city and its inhabitants away with me !
It was useless even to try: the mass was too
heavy. One cannot root up a village from
its foundations to transplant it elsewhere.

We will return therefore to the Sphex-
wasps working on level ground, in ordinary
soil, as happens in by far the greater num-
ber of cases. As soon as the burrow is dug,
the chase begins. Let us profit by the
Wasp's distant excursions in search of her
game and examine the dwelling. The usual
site of a Sphex colony is, as I said, level
ground. Nevertheless, the soil is not so
smooth but that we find a few little mounds
crowned with a tuft of grass or wormwood,
a few cracks consolidated by the scanty roots
of the vegetation that covers them. It is
in the sides of these furrows that the Sphex
builds her dwelling. The gallery consists
first of a horizontal portion, two or three
inches long and serving as an approach to
66

The Yellow-winged Sphex

the hidden retreat destined for the provisions
and the larvae. It is in this entrance-passage
that the Sphex takes shelter in bad weather;
it is here that she retires for the night and
rests for a few moments in the daytime, put-
ting outside only her expressive face, with its
great, bold eyes. Following on the vesti-
bule comes a sudden bend, which descends
more or less obliquely to a depth of two or
three inches more and ends in an oval cell
of somewhat larger diameter, whose main
axis lies horizontally. The walls of the cell
are not coated with any particular cement;
but, in spite of their bareness, we can see
that they have been the object of the most
conscientious labour. The sand has been
heaped up and carefully levelled on the floor,
the ceiling and the sides, so as to prevent
landslips and remove any roughness that
might hurt the delicate skin of the grub.
Lastly, this cell communicates with the pass-
age by a narrow entrance, just wide enough
to admit the Sphex laden with her prey.

When this first cell is supplied with an egg
and the necessary provisions, the Sphex walls
up the entrance, but does not yet abandon
her burrow. A second cell Is dug beside the
first and victualled in the same way; then a
67

The Hunting Wasps

third and sometimes a fourth. Not till
then does the Sphex shoot back into the bur-
row all the rubbish accumulated outside the
door and completely remove all the outward
traces of her work. Thus, to each burrow
there are usually three cells, rarely two and
still more rarely four. Now, as we ascer-
tain when dissecting the insect, we can esti-
mate the number of eggs laid at about thirty,
which brings up to ten the number of bur-
rows needed. On the other hand, the ope-
rations are hardly begun before September
and are finished by the end of the month.
The Sphex, therefore, can devote only two
or three days at most to each burrow and its
provisioning. No one will deny that the act-
ive little creature has not a moment to lose,
when. In so short a time, she has to excavate
her den, to procure a dozen Crickets, to
carry them sometimes from a distance in the
face of Innumerable difficulties, to store them
away and finally to stop up the burrow.
And besides there are days when the wind
makes hunting impossible, rainy days or even
merely grey days, which cause all work to be
suspended. One can readily imagine from
this that the Sphex Is unable to give to her
buildings the perhaps permanent solidity
68

The Yellow-winged Sphex

which the Great Cerceres bestow upon their
long galleries. The latter hand down from
generation to generation their substantial
dwellings, each year excavated to a greater
depth than the last, galleries which threw me
into a sweat when I tried to inspect them and
which generally triumphed over my efforts
and my implements. The Sphex does not
inherit the work of her predecessors: she has
to do everything for herself and quickly.
Her dwelling Is but a tent, hastily pitched
for a day and shifted on the morrow. As
compensation, the larvse, who have only a
thin layer of sand to cover them, are capable
themselves of providing the shelter which
their mother could not create : they clothe
themselves in a threefold and fourfold water-
proof wrapper, far superior to the thin co-
coon of the Cerceres.

But here, with a loud buzz, comes a Sphex
who, returning from the chase, stops on a
neighbouring bush, holding In her mandibles,
by one antenna, a large Cricket, several
times her own weight. Exhausted by the
burden, she takes a moment's rest. Then
she once more grips her captive between her
feet and, with a supreme effort, covers in one
flight the width of the ravine that separates
69

The Hunting Wasps

her from her home. She alights heavily on
the level ground where I am watching, in the
very middle of a Sphex village. The rest
of the journey is performed on foot. The
Wasp, not at all intimidated by my presence,
bestrides her victim and advances, bearing
her head proudly aloft and hauling the
Cricket, who trails between her legs, by an
antenna held in her mandibles. If the
ground be bare, it is easy to drag the victim
along; but, should some grass-tuft spread the
network, of its shoots across the road, it is
curious to observe the amazement of the
Sphex when one of these little ropes suddenly
thwarts her efforts; it is curious to witness
her marches and countermarches, her re-
iterated attempts, until the obstacle is over-
come, either with the aid of the wings or by
means of a clever deviation. The Cricket
is at last conveyed to his destination and is
so placed that his antennae exactly touch the
mouth of the burrow. The Sphex then
abandons her prey and descends hurriedly to
the bottom of the cave. A few seconds
later, we see her reappear, showing her head
out of doors and giving a little cry of delight.
The Cricket's antennae are within her reach;
70

The Yellow-winged Sphex

she seizes them and the game is brought
quickly down to the lair.

I still ask myself, without being able to
find a sufficiently convincing solution, the
reason for these complicated proceedings at
the moment when the Cricket is introduced
into the burrow. Instead of going down to
her den alone, to reappear afterwards and
pick up the prey left for a time on the thresh-
old, would not the Sphex have done better
to continue to drag the Cricket along the gal-
lery as she does in the open air, seeing that
the width of the tunnel permits it, or else to
go in first, backwards, and pull him after
her? The various Predatory Wasps whom
I have hitherto been able to observe carry
down to their cells straight away, without
preliminaries, the game which they hold
clasped beneath their bellies with the aid
of their mandibles and their middle-legs.
Leon Dufour's Cerceris begins by complicat-
ing her procedure, because, after laying her
Buprestis for a moment at the door of her
underground home, she at once enters her
gallery backwards and then seizes the vic-
tim with her mandibles and drags it to the
bottom of the burrow. But it is a far cry
71

The Hunting Wasps

from these tactics and those adopted in a Hke
case by the Cricket-hunters. Why that
domicihary visit which invariably precedes
the entrance of the game? Could it not be
that, before descending with a cumbrous bur-
den, the Sphex thinks it wise to take a look
at the bottom of her dwelling, so as to make
sure that all is well and, if necessary, to drive
out some brazen parasite who may have
slipped in during her entrance? If so, who
is the parasite? Several Diptera, Predatory
Gnats, especially Tachinae, watch at the doors
of the Hunting Wasps, spying for the pro-
pitious moment to lay their eggs on others'
provisions; but none of them enters the home
or ventures into the dark passages where the
owner, if by ill-luck she happened to be in,
would perhaps make them pay dearly for
their audacity. The Sphex, like all the rest,
pays her tribute to the plundering Tachinae;
but these never enter the burrow to perpe-
trate their misdeeds. Besides, have they not
all the time that they need to lay their eggs
on the Cricket? If they are sharp about
it, they can easily profit by the temporary
abandonment of the victim to entrust their
progeny to it. Some greater danger still
must therefore threaten the Sphex, since her
72

The Yellow-winged Sphex

preliminary descent of the burrow is of such
imperious necessity.

Here is the only fact observed by myself
that may throw a little light on the problem.
Amid a colony of Sphex-wasps in full swing,
a colony from which any other Wasp is
usually excluded, I one day surprised a hunt-
ress of a different genus, Tachytes nigra,
carrying one by one, without hurrying, in the
midst of the crowd where she was but an in-
truder, grains of sand, bits of little dry stalks
and other diminutive materials to stop up a
burrow oiP the same shape and width as the
adjacent burrows of the Sphex. The labour
was too carefully performed to allow of any
doubt of the presence of the worker's egg in
the tunnel. A Sphex moving about uneasily,
apparently the lawful owner of the burrow,
did not fail, each time that the strange Wasp
entered the gallery, to rush in pursuit of her;
but she emerged swiftly, as though fright-
ened, followed by the other, who impassively
continued her work. I inspected this bur-
row, evidently an object in dispute between
the two Wasps, and found in it a cell pro-
visioned with four Crickets. Suspicion al-
most makes way for certainty: these pro-
visions are far in excess of the needs of a
73

The Hunting Wasps

Tachytes-grub, who is certainly not more
than half the size of the larva of the Sphex.
She whose impassiveness, whose care to stop
up the burrow would at first have made one
take her for the mistress of the house was
in reality a mere usurper. How is it that the
Sphex, who is larger and more powerful than
her adversary, allows herself to be robbed
with impunity, confining herself to fruitless
pursuits and fleeing like a coward when the
interloper, who does not even appear to no-
tice her presence, turns round to leave the
burrow? Can it be that, in insects as in
man, the first chance of success lies in
de I'audace, encore de I'audace et toujours
de I'audace f The usurper certainly had au-
dacity and to spare. I see her still, with
imperturbable calmness, moving in and out
in front of the complaisant Sphex, who
stamps her feet with impatience but does not
fall upon the thief.

I will add that, in other circumstances, I
have repeatedly found the same Wasp,
whom I presume to be a parasite, in short the
Black Tachytes, dragging a Cricket by one
of his antennas. Was he a lawfully-acquired
prey? I should like to think so; but the
vacillating behaviour of the insect, who went
74

The Yellow-winged Sphex

straying about the ruts in the roads as
though seeking for a burrow to suit it, al-
ways left me uncertain. I have never wit-
nessed its digging-work, if it really un-
dertakes the labour of excavation. And, a
more serious matter, I have seen it leave its
game on the rubbish-heap, perhaps not
knowing what to do with it, for lack of a bur-
row wherein to place It. Such wastefulness
as this seems to me to point to Ill-gotten
goods; and I ask myself If the Cricket were
not stolen from the Sphex at the moment
when she abandoned her prey on the thresh-
old. My suspicions also fall upon Tachytes
obsoleta, banded with white round the abdo-
men like Sphex albisecta and feeding her lar-
vae on Crickets similar to those hunted by the
latter. I have never seen her digging any
galleries, but I have caught her with a
Cricket whom the Sphex would not have re-
jected. This Identity of provisions in spe-
cies of different genera raises doubts in my
mind as to the lawfulness of the booty. Let
me add, lastly, to atone in a measure for the
Injury which my suspicions may do to the
reputation of the genus, that I have been the
eye-witness of a perfectly straightforward
capture of a small and still wingless Cricket
75

The Hunting Wasps

by Tachytes tarsina and that I have seen her
digging cells and victualling them with game
acquired by her own valiant exertions.

I have therefore only suspicions to offer
in explanation of the obstinacy of the Sphex-
wasps in going down their tunnels before
carrying in their prey. Can they have some
other object besides that of dislodging a para-
site who may have arrived during their ab-
sence? This is what I despair of ever know-
ing; for who can interpret the thousand ruses
of instinct? Poor human reason, which can-
not even fathom the wisdom of a Sphex!

At any rate, it has been proved that these
ruses are singularly invariable. In this con-
nection, I will mention an experiment which
interested me greatly. Here are the par-
ticulars : at the moment when the Sphex is
making her domiciliary visit, I take the
Cricket left at the entrance to the dwelling
and place her a few inches farther away.
The Sphex comes up, utters her usual cry,
looks here and there in astonishment and,
seeing the game too far off, comes out of her
hole to seize It and bring It back to its right
place. Having done this, she goes down
again, but alone. I play the same trick upon
her; and the Sphex has the same disappolnt-
76

The Yellow-winged Sphex

ment on her arrival at the entrance. The
victim is once more dragged back to the edge
of the hole, but the Wasp always goes down
alone; and this goes on as long as my pa-
tience is not exhausted. Time after time,
forty times over, did I repeat the same ex-
periment on the same Wasp; her persistency
vanquished mine and her tactics never varied.

Having demonstrated the same inflexible
obstinacy which I have just described in the
case of all the Sphex-wasps on whom I cared
to experiment in the same colony, I continued
to worry my head over it for some time.
What I asked myself was this :

" Does the insect obey a fatal tendency,
which no circumstances can ever modify?
Are its actions all performed by rule; and
has it no power of acquiring the least experi-
ence on its own account? "

Some additional observations modified
this too-absolute view. Next year, I visit
the same spot at the proper season. The
new generation has inherited the burrowing-
site selected by the previous generation; it
has also faithfully inherited its tactics: the
experiment of withdrawing the Cricket yields
the same results. Such as last year's Sphex-
wasps were, such are those of the present
77

The Hunting Wasps

year, equally persistent in a fruitless pro-
cedure. The illusion was simply growing
worse, when good fortune brought me into
the presence of another colony of Sphex-
wasps, in a district at some distance from
the first. I recommenced my attempts.
After two or three experiments with results
similar to those which I had so often ob-
tained, the Sphex got astride of the Cricket,
seized him with her mandibles by the an-
tennae and at once dragged him Into the bur-
row. Who was the fool now? Why, the
experimenter foiled by the clever Wasp I
At the other holes, her neighbours likewise,
one sooner, another later, discovered my
treachery and entered the dwelling with the
game. Instead of persisting in abandoning
it on the threshold to seize it afterwards.
What did all this mean? The colony which
I was now Inspecting, descended from an-
other stock — for the children return to the
site selected by their parents — was cleverer
than the colony of the year before. Craft is
handed down: there are tribes that are
sharper-witted and tribes that are duller-wlt-
ted, apparently according to the faculties of
their elders. With the Sphex as with us, the
intellect differs with the province.
78

The Yellow-winged Sphex

Next day, In a different locality, I repeated
my experiment with another Cricket; and
every time the Sphex was hoodwinked. I
had come upon a dense-minded tribe, a regu-
lar village of Boeotians, as in my first observa-
tions.

79

CHAPTER V

THE THREE DAGGER-THRUSTS

THERE is no doubt that the Sphex dis-
plays her most cunning resources at the
moment of immolating a Cricket; it is im-
portant therefore to ascertain the manner
wherein the victim Is sacrificed. Profiting
by the repeated attempts which I had
made when I was studying the tactics of the
Cerceres, I at once applied to the Sphex the
method which had succeeded with the other
Wasps, a method that consisted in taking the
prey from the huntress and forthwith re-
placing it by another, living prey. The sub-
stitution is all the easier inasmuch as we have
seen the Sphex herself releasing her victim
in order to go down the burrow for a mo-
ment alone. Her daring familiarity, which
makes her come and take from your fingers
and even out of your hand the Cricket whom
you have stolen from her and now offer her
again, also lends itself admirably to the suc-
cessful issue of the experiment, by allowing
80

The Three Dagger-thrusts

you to observe every detail of the drama
closely.

Again, to find live Crickets is an easy mat-
ter: we have but to lift the first stone that
we see and we find them crouching under-
neath, sheltered from the sun. These
Crickets are young ones, of the same year,
who as yet boast but rudimentary wings
and who, not possessing the industry of the
full-grown insect, have not learnt to dig
those cavernous retreats where they would
be safe from the Sphex' investigations. In
a few moments I have as many live Crickets
as I could wish for. This completes my
preparations. I climb to the top of my ob-
servatory, establish myself on the level
ground, in the centre of the Sphex village,
and wait.

A huntress appears upon the scene, carts
her Cricket to the entrance of the home and
goes down her burrow by herself. I quickly
remove the Cricket and substitute one of mine,
placing him, however, some distance away
from the hole. The kidnapper returns,
looks round and runs and seizes the victim,
which Is too far off for her. I am all eyes,
all attention. Nothing would induce me to
give up my part in the tragic spectacle which
8i

The Hunting Wasps

I am about to witness. The terrified Cricket
takes to flight, hopping as fast as he can; the
Sphex pursues him hot-foot, reaches him,
rushes upon him. There follows, amid the
dust, a confused encounter, wherein each
champion, now victor, now vanquished, by
turns is at the top or at the bottom. Success,
for a moment undecided, at last crowns the
aggressor's efforts. Despite his vigorous
kicks, despite the snaps of his pincer-like
mandibles, the Cricket is laid low and
stretched upon his back.

The murderess soon makes her arrange-
ments. She places herself belly to belly
with her adversary, but in the opposite direc-
tion, grasps one of the threads at the tip of
the Cricket's abdomen with her mandibles
and masters with her fore-legs the convulsive
efforts of his thick hinder thighs. At the
same time, her middle-legs hug the heaving
sides of the beaten Insect; and her hind-legs,
pressing hke two levers on the front of the
head, force the joint of the neck to open
wide. The Sphex then curves her abdomen
vertically, so as to offer only an unattack-
able convex surface to the Cricket's mandi-
bles; and we see, not without emotion, Its
poisoned lancet drive once into the victim's
82

The Three Dagger-thrusts

neck, next into the joint of the front two seg-
ments of the thorax and lastly towards the
abdomen. In less time than it takes to re-
late, the murder is consummated ; and the
Sphex, after adjusting the disorder of her
toilet, makes ready to haul home the victim,
whose limbs are still quivering in the throes
of death.

Let us consider for a moment the excel-
lence of the tactics of which I have given a
feeble glimpse. The Cerceris attacks a
passive adversary, incapable of flight, almost
devoid of offensive weapons, whose sole
chances of safety lie In a stout cuirass, the
weak point of which, however, is known to
the murderess. But what a difference here !
The quarry is armed with dreadful mandibles,
capable of disembowelling the assailant if
they succeed in seizing her; it sports a pair
of powerful legs, regular clubs bristling with
a double row of sharp spikes, which can be
used either to enable the Cricket to hop out
of his enemy's reach, or to send her sprawl-
ing with brutal kicks. Observe therefore
the precautions which the Sphex takes before
setting her sting in motion. The victim,
turned upon his back, cannot, for lack of any
purchase, use his hind-levers to escape with,
83

The Hunting Wasps

which he certainly would do if he were at-
tacked in the normal position, as are the big
Weevils of the Great Cerceris. His spurred
legs, mastered by the Sphex' fore-feet, can-
not act as offensive weapons either; and his
mandibles, kept at a distance by the Wasp's
hind-legs, open in wide menace without being
able to seize a thing. But it is not enough
for the Sphex to render her Cricket incapable
of hurting her; she must also hold him so
firmly pinioned that he cannot make the
slightest movement capable of diverting the
sting from the points at which the poison is
to be injected; and it is probably with the ob-
ject of stilling the movements of the abdo-
men that one of its terminal threads is
grasped. No, if a fertile imagination had
allowed itself free scope to invent a plan of
attack at will, it could not have contrived any-
thing better; and it is open to doubt whether
the athletes of the classic palestra, when
grappling with an adversary, boasted more
scientific attitudes.

I have said that the sting is driven several
times into the patient's body: first under the
neck, then behind the prothorax, next and
lastly towards the top of the abdomen. It
is in these three dagger-thrusts that the in-
84

The Three Dagger-thrusts

fallibility and the intuitive science of instinct
appear in all their splendour. Let us first
recall the principal conclusions to which our
earlier study of the Cerceris has led us.
The victims of the Wasps whose larvae live
on prey are not proper corpses, in spite of
their immobility, which is sometimes com-
plete. They suffer simply from a total or
partial locomotory paralysis, from a more or
less thorough annihilation of animal life;
but vegetable life, the life of the organs of
nutrition, is maintained for a long while yet
and preserves from decomposition the prey
which the larva is not to devour for some
time to come. To produce this paralysis,
the Hunting Wasp employ precisely the
process which the advanced science of our
own day might suggest to the experimental
physiologists, that is to say, they injure, by
means of their poisoned sting, the nerve-
centres that control the locomotory organs.
We know besides that the several centres or
ganglia of the nervous system of articulate
animals are, within certain limits, independ-
ent of one another in their action, so that an
injury to any one of them does not, or at
any rate not immediately, entail more than
the paralysis of the corresponding segment;
85

The Hunting Wasps

and this applies all the more when the dif-
ferent ganglia are farther apart. When, on
the other hand, they are welded together, the
lesion of this common centre induces paraly-
sis of all the segments over which its ramifi-
cations are distributed. This is the case
with the Buprestes and the Weevils, whom
the Cerceres paralyse with a single thrust of
the sting, aimed at the common mass of the
nerve-centres of the thorax. But open a
Cricket. What do we find to set the three
pairs of legs in motion? We find what the
Sphex knew long before the anatomists:
three nervous centres at a great distance
one from the other. Hence the magnificent
logic of her needle-thrusts thrice repeated.
Proud science, bend the knee !

Despite the appearances that might make
us think otherwise, the Crickets immolated
by the Yellow-winged Sphex are no more
dead than the Weevils pierced by the Cer-
ceris' dart. The flexibility of the victims'
integuments, faithfully revealing the slight-
est internal movement, enables us in this case
to dispense with the artificial methods which
I employed to demonstrate the presence of
a remnant of life in the Cleoni of the Great
Cerceris. In fact, if we assiduously observe
86

The Three Dagger-thrusts

a Cricket stretched on his back, a week, a
fortnight even or more after the murder, we
see the abdomen heaving deeply at long in-
tervals. Pretty often we can still perceive
a few quiverings in the palpi and exceedingly-
pronounced movements on the part of both
the antennae and the abdominal threads,
which diverge and separate and then sud-
denly come together. I have succeeded, by
placing the sacrificed Crickets in glass tubes,
in keeping them perfectly fresh for a month
and a half. Consequently, the Sphex-grubs,
which live for less than a fortnight before
shrouding themselves in their cocoons, are
certain of fresh meat until their banquet is
finished.

The chase is over; the three or four Crick-
ets that are the allotted portion of each cell
are stacked methodically, lying on their
backs, with their heads at the far end of the
cell and their feet at the entrance. An egg
is laid on one of them. The burrow must
now be closed. The sand resulting from the
excavation, which is lying in a heap outside
the front-door, is quickly swept backwards
down the passage. From time to time, some
fair-sized bits of gravel are picked out
singly, by scratching the heap of rubbish with
87

The Hunting Wasps

the fore-feet, and carried with the mandibles
to strengthen the crumbly mass. Should the
Wasp find none within reach to suit her, she
goes and searches for them in the neighbour-
hood and seems to choose them as conscien-
tiously as a mason would choose the chief
stones for his building. Vegetable remains,
tiny fragments of dead leaves, are also em-
ployed. In a few moments, every outward
trace of the underground dwelling has dis-
appeared; and, if we have not been careful
to mark the site of the abode, it becomes im-
possible for the most watchful eye to find it
again. When this is finished, a new burrow
is dug, provisioned and walled up as often as
the teeming ovaries demand. Having com-
pleted the laying of her eggs, the Sphex re-
sumes her careless, vagrant life, until the first
cold snap puts an end to her well-filled exist-
ence.

The Sphex' task Is accomplished; and I
will finish mine with an examination of her
weapon. The organ destined for the elabo-
ration of her poison consists of two prettily-
ramified tubes, ending separately in a com-
mon reservoir or phial, shaped like a pea.
From this phial starts a slender channel

The Three Dagger-thrusts

which runs down the axis of the sting and
conducts the httle drop of poison to its tip.
The dimensions of the lancet are very small
and not such as one would expect from the
size of the Sphex and especially from the
effects which its prick produces on the Crick-
ets. The point is quite smooth and entirely
deprived of those backward indentations
which we find in the Hive-bee's sting. The
reason for this is obvious. The bee uses
her sting only to avenge an injury, even at
the cost of her life; and the teeth of the
dart resist its withdrawal from the wound
and thus cause mortal ruptures in the viscera
at the extremity of the abdomen. What
would the Sphex have done with a weapon
that would have been fatal to her on her first
expedition? Supposing that the dart could
be withdrawn in spite of its teeth, I doubt
whether any Hymenopteron using her
weapon chiefly to wound the game destined
for her larvae would be supplied with a
toothed sting. With her, the dirk is not a
show weapon, unsheathed to satisfy revenge :
revenge, the so-called pleasure of the gods,
but a very costly pleasure, for the vindictive
Bee sometimes pays for it with her life; it
89

The Hunting Wasps

is an implement for use, a tool, on which the
future of the grubs depends. It must there-
fore be one easy to wield in the struggle with
the captured prey; it must be capable of being
inserted in the flesh and withdrawn without
the least hesitation, a condition much better
fulfilled by a smooth than by a barbed blade.
I wished to find out at my own expense if
the Sphex' sting is very painful, this sting
which lays low sturdy victims with terrible
rapidity. Well, I confess with profound ad-
miration that it is insignificant and bears no
comparison, for intensity of pain, with the
stings of the irascible Bees and Social Wasps.
It hurts so little that, instead of using the
forceps, I would not scruple to take in my
fingers any live Sphex-wasps that I needed in
my experiments. I can say the same of the
different Cerceres, of the Philanthi,^ of the
Palari, of even the huge Scoliae,^ whose
very view Inspires dismay, and, generally
speaking, of all the Hunting Wasps that I
have been able to observe. I make an ex-
ception of the Spider-huntresses, the Pom-

iFor Philanthus Apivorus, the Bee-eating Wasp, cf.
Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre, trans-
lated by Bernard Miall : chap. xiii. — Translator's Note.

2Cf. The Life and Love of the Insect: chap, xi.—
Translator's Note.

90

The Three Dagger-thrusts

pill;i and even then their sting is much less
painful than the Bees'.

One last word: we know how furiously
the Hymenoptera armed with a purely de-
fensive dart, the Social Wasps, for instance,
rush upon him who is bold enough to disturb
their dweUing-house and punish him for his
temerity. On the other hand, those whose
sting is intended for killing game are very
pacific, as though they were aware of the im-
portance which the Httle drop of poison in
their phial possesses for their family. This
tiny drop is the safeguard of their race, I
might say, its livelihood; and so they are very
economical in its use, reserving it for the
serious business of the chase, without any
parade of vindictive courage. I was not once
punished with a sting when I established my-
self amid the villages of our various Hunt-
ing Wasps, though I overturned their nests
and stole the larvae and the provisions. ^ You
must lay hold of the insect to make it use
its weapon ; and even then it does not always
pierce the skin, unless you place within its
reach a part more delicate than the fingers,
such as, for instance, the wrist.

iCf. The Life and Love of the Insect: chap, xii.—
Translator's Note.

91

CHAPTER VI

THE LARVA AND THE NYMPH

THE egg of the Yellow-winged Sphex is
white, elongated, cylindrical, slightly
bow-shaped and measures three to four milli-
metres ^ in length. So far from being laid
anywhere on the victim, at random, it is de-
posited on a specially favoured spot, which is
always the same; in short, it is placed across
the Cricket's breast, a little to one side, be-
tween the first and second pair of legs. The
egg of the White-edged Sphex and that of
the Languedocian Sphex occupy a similar
position: the first on the breast of a Locust,
the second on the breast of an Ephippiger.^
The point selected must present some pe-
culiarity of great importance to the young
larva's safety, for I have never known it to
vary.

The egg hatches after three or four days.
A very delicate wrapper tears asunder; and
there lies before our eyes a feeble grub,

^.117 to .156 inch. — Translator's Note.
2A species of Green Grasshopper. — Translator's Note.
92

The Larva and the Nymph

transparent as crystal, a little attenuated and
as it were compressed in front, slightly
swollen at the back, and adorned on either
side with a narrow white thread formed of
the principal trachean ducts. The frail
creature occupies the same position as the
egg. Its head is, so to speak, planted at the
very spot where the upper end of the egg was
fixed; and all the remainder simply rests
upon the victim, without being fastened to it.
The grub's transparency enables us readily to
distinguish rapid undulations inside it, ripples
which follow one upon the other with mathe-
matical regularity and which, beginning in the
middle of the body, spread some forward
and some backward. These fluctuating
movements are due to the digestive canal,
which takes long draughts of the juices drawn
from the victim's body.

Let us dwell for a moment upon a sight
which cannot fail to attract our attention.
The Wasp's prey lies on its back, motionless.
In the cell of the Yellow-winged Sphex, it is
a Cricket, or rather three or four Crickets
stacked one atop the other; In the cell of the
Languedocian Sphex, it is a single head of
game, but large in proportion, a fat-bellied
Ephippiger. The grub is lost should it hap-
93

The Hunting Wasps

pen to be torn from the spot whence it derives
life; a fall would be the end of it, for, weak
as it is and deprived of all means of motion,
how could it make its way back to the spot at
which it slakes its appetite? The slightest
movement would enable the victim to rid
itself of the atom gnawing at its entrails; and
yet the gigantic prey submits meekly, without
the least quiver of protest. I well know that
It is paralysed, that it has lost the use of its
legs through the sting of its murderess; but
still, recent victim that it is, it retains more or
less power of movement and sensation in the
regions not affected by the dart. The ab-
domen throbs, the mandibles open and close,
the abdominal filaments wave to and fro, as
do the antennae. What would happen if the
worm were to bite into one of the still Im-
pressionable parts, near the mandibles, or
even on the belly, which, being more tender
and more succulent, seems as though it ought,
after all, to supply the first mouthfuls of the
feeble grub? Bitten to the quick, the
Cricket, Locust or Ephipplger would at least
shiver; and this faint tremor of the skin
would be enough to shake off the tiny larva
and bring it to the ground, where it would no
doubt perish, for it might at any moment find
94

The Larva and the Nymph

Itself in the grips of those dreadful man-
dibles.

But there is one part of the body where no
such danger Is to be feared, the part which
the Wasp has wounded with her sting, In
short, the thorax. Here and here alone, on
a victim of recent date, the experimenter can
rummage with a needle, driving it through
and through, without producing a sign of
suffering in the patient. Well, It is here that
the egg is Invariably laid; it is here that the
young larva always takes its first bite at its
prey. Gnawed at a point no longer suscep-
tible to pain, the Cricket remains motionless.
Later, when the wound has reached a sensi-
tive point, he will doubtless toss about to such
extent as he can; but then it will be too late:
his torpor will be too deep; and besides the
enemy will have gained strength. This ex-
plains why the egg Is laid on a spot which
never varies, near the wounds caused by the
sting, in short, on the thorax: not In the mid-
dle, where the skin would perhaps be too
thick for the new-born grub, but on one side,
towards the juncture of the legs, where It is
much thinner. What a judicious choice, how
logical on the part of the mother when,
underground, in complete darkness, she dls-
95

The Hunting Wasps

cerns the one suitable spot on the victim and
selects it for her egg!

I have reared Sphex-grubs by giving them,
one after the other, the Crickets taken from
the cells ; and I was then able to follow day
by day the rapid progress of my nurselings.
The first Cricket, the one on whom the egg
was laid, is attacked, as I have said, near the
point where the huntress administered her
second sting, that is to say, between the first
and second pair of legs. In a few days, the
young larva has dug in the victim's breast a
hollow large enough to admit half its body.
It is not uncommon to see the Cricket, bitten
to the quick, uselessly waving his antennae and
his abdominal threads, opening and closing
his mandibles on space and even moving a
leg. But the enemy is safe and is ransacking
his entrails with impunity. What an awful
nightmare for the paralysed Cricket !

The first ration is finished in six or seven
days' time; none of it remains but the frame-
work of skin, with all its parts more or less in
position. The larva, whose length is now
twelve millimetres,^ leaves the Cricket's body
through the hole in the thorax which it made
to start with. During this operation, it

^Nearly half an inch. — Translator's Note.
96

The Larva and the Nymph

moults; and its cast skin often remains caught
in the opening through which it made its
exit. It rests after the moulting and then
attacks a second ration. Being stronger
now, the larva has nothing to fear from the
feeble movements of the Cricket, whose
daily-increasing torpor has had time to ex-
tinguish the last glimmers of resisting-power
during the week and more that have elapsed
since the dagger-thrusts were given. It is
therefore assailed with no precautions,
usually at the belly, which is the tenderest
part and the richest in juices. Soon the turn
comes of the third Cricket and lastly of the
fourth, who is devoured in ten hours or so.
Of these last three victims, all that remains
is the tough integuments, whose various parts
are severed one by one and carefully emptied.
If a fifth ration be presented, the larva scorns
it, or hardly touches it, not from abstemious-
ness, but from imperious necessity. For ob-
serve that hitherto the larva has ejected no
excrement and that its intestines, into which
four Crickets have been crammed, are dis-
tended to bursting-point. A new ration can-
not therefore tempt its gluttony; and hence-
forth it thinks only of making itself a silken
tabernacle.

97

The Hunting Wasps

In all, its repast has lasted from ten to
twelve days without cessation. At this
period, the larva's length measures from
twenty-five to thirty millimetres ^ and its
greatest breadth from five to six.^ Its gen-
eral outline, spreading a little at the back and
gradually tapering in front, conforms with
the usual type of Hymenopteron-grubs. Its
segments are fourteen in number, including
the head, which is very small and armed with
weak mandibles that would appear unequal to
the part which they have just played. Of
these fourteen segments, the middle ones are
supplied with stigmata, or breathing-holes.
Its livery consists of a yellowish-white
ground, studded with innumerable dots of a
chalky white.

We have seen the larva begin its second
Cricket with the belly, the juiciest and softest
part. Like a child, which first licks the jam
off its bread and then bites into the crumb
with a disdainful tooth, the larva makes
straight for the best part, the abdominal
viscera, and leaves until later the meat that
has to be patiently extracted from its horny
sheath: a task for a leisure hour, when it

1.97s to 1. 17 inch. — Translator's Note,
2.195 to .234 inch. — Translator's Note,

98

The Larva and the Nymph

is comfortably digesting the earlier meal.
Nevertheless, the grub, when quite young,
when newly hatched, is not so dainty : it goes
for the bread first and the jam afterwards.
It has no choice: it is obliged to bite its first
mouthful right out of the breast, at the spot
where the mother fixed the egg. The food
here is a little harder, but the place is safe,
because of the profound inertia into which the
thorax has been plunged by three thrusts of
the dagger. Elsewhere there would be, if
not always, at least often, spasmodic shud-
ders which would dislodge the feeble grub
and expose it to terrible hazards among a
heap of victims whose hind-legs, toothed like
saws, might give an occasional jerk and whose
mandibles might still be capable of snapping.
It is therefore the question of safety and not
of the grub's likes or dislikes that determines
the mother's choice in placing the egg.

And here a suspicion occurs to my mind.
The first ration, the Cricket on whom the egg
is laid, exposes the grub to more parlous risks
than do the others. To begin with, the larva
is still but a frail worm; and then the victim
is quite a recent one and therefore most likely
to give evidence of a spark of life. This
first victim has to be paralysed as completely
99

The Hunting Wasps

as possible; consequently it receives the
Wasp's three dagger-thrusts. But the
others, whose torpor deepens the older they
grow, the others, whom the larva attacks
after it has gained in strength: do they need
to be operated on as carefully? Might not
one prick be enough, or two pricks, the effects
of which would spread little by little while the
grub is consuming its first ration? The
poison-fluid is too precious for the Wasp to
lavish it unnecessarily: it is hunting-ammuni-
tion, to be employed with due economy. At
any rate, though I have witnessed three con-
secutive stabs given to the same victim, at
other times I have seen only two ad-
ministered. It is true that the quivering tip
of the Sphex' abdomen seemed to be seeking
the favourable spot for a third wound; but,
if it was really given, it escaped me. I should
therefore be inclined to think that the victim
forming the first ration is always stabbed
thrice, whereas the others, from motives of
economy, receive only two stings. Our study
of the Ammophilae, who hunt Caterpillars,
will confirm this suspicion later.

After devouring the last Cricket, the larva
sets about weaving its cocoon. The work
is finished well within forty-eight hours.

lOO

The Larva and the Nymph

Henceforth, the skilful worker, safe within
her Impenetrable shelter, can yield to the
Irresistible lethargy that invades her, to that
nameless mode of existence, neither sleep
nor waking, neither death nor life, from
which she will emerge, ten months from now,
transfigured. Very few cocoons are so com-
plicated as hers. It consists, In fact, In
addition to a coarse outer network, of three
distinct layers, presenting the appearance of
three cocoons one inside the other. Let us
examine In detail these several courses of the
silken edifice.

There Is first an open woof, of a rough
cobweb texture, whereon the larva begins by
isolating itself, hanging as in a hammock, to
work more easily at the cocoon proper. This
unfinished net, hastily woven to serve as a
builder's scaffolding. Is made of threads flung
out at random, which hold together grains of
sand, bits of earth and the leavings of the
larva's feast: the Cricket's thighs, still braided
with red, his shanks and pieces of his skull.
The next covering, which is the first covering
of the cocoon proper, consists of a much-
creased felted tunic, light-red in colour, very
fine and very flexible. A few threads flung
out here and there join It to the previous scaf-

lOI

The Hunting Wasps

folding and to the second wrapper. It forms
a cyHndrical wallet, closed on every side and
too large for its contents, thus causing the
surface to wrinkle.

Next comes an elastic sheath, distinctly
smaller than the wallet that contains it, almost
cylindrical, rounded at the upper end, towards
which the larva's head Is turned, and finishing
in a blunt cone at the lower end. Its colour
Is still light-red, save towards the cone at the
bottom, where the shade Is darker. Its con-
sistency is pretty firm; nevertheless, it yields
to moderate squeezing, except In Its conical
part, which resists the pressure of the fingers
and seems to contain a hard substance. On
opening this sheath, we see that it is formed
of two layers closely applied one to the other,
but easily separated. The outer layer is a
silk felt, exactly like that of the wallet which
comes before; the inner layer, the third layer
of the cocoon, Is a sortof shellac, a shiny wash
of a dark violet-brown, brittle, very soft to
the touch and of a nature apparently quite
different from the rest of the cocoon. We
see, in fact, under the microscope that. Instead
of being a felt of silky threads like the previ-
ous wrapper, it Is a homogeneous coating of
a peculiar varnish, whose origin is rather
1 02

The Larva and the Nymph

singular, as we shall see. As for the re-
sistance of the cone-shaped end of the cocoon,
we discover that this is due to a plug of
crumbly matter, violet-black and sparkling
with a number of black particles. This plug
is the dried mass of the excrement which the
larva ejects, once and for all, inside the
cocoon itself. The same stercoral kernel also
causes the darker shade of the cone-shaped
end of the cocoon. The complicated dwell-
ing averages twenty-seven millimetres in
length, while its greatest width is nine milli-
metres.^

Let us return to the violet varnish that lines
the inside of the cocoon, I thought at first
that I must attribute it to the silk-glands,
which, after giving a glossy coat to the double
wrapper of silk and the scaffolding, have still
a secret store of the fluid. To convince my-
self, I opened some larvae which had just
finished their work as weavers and had not
yet begun to apply their lacquer. At that
period, I saw no trace of violet fluid in the
silk-glands. This shade is found only in the
digestive canal, which bulges with a purple-
coloured pulp; we find it also, but later, in
the stercoral plug relegated to the lower end

^1.05 X .35 inch. — Translator's Note.
103

The Hunting Wasps

of the cocoon. With this exception, every-
thing Is white, or faintly tinged with yellow.
Far be it from me to suggest that the larva
plasters Its cocoon with its excreta ; and yet I
am convinced that this plaster Is a product of
the digestive organs and I suspect, though I
cannot say for certain — having been clumsy
enough several times to miss a favourable
opportunity of making sure — that the larva
disgorges and applies with its mouth the
quintessence of the purple pulp from Its
stomach in order to form the shellac glaze.
Only after this last performance would it
reject its digestive residuum in a single lump;
and this would explain the unpleasant neces-
sity in which the larva finds itself of making
room for Its excreta Inside Its actual habita-
tion.

Be this as it may, there can be no doubt
about the usefulness of the coating of shellac;
its complete impermeability must protect the
larva against the damp which would certainly
attack it In the precarious refuge dug for It
by the mother. Remember that the larva Is
buried only a few Inches down In uncovered,
sandy ground. To judge to what extent the
cocoons thus varnished are able to resist the
damp, I kept some steeped In water for
104

The Larva and the Nymph

several days on end, without afterwards find-
ing a trace of moisture inside them. Com-
pare the Sphex' cocoon, with its manifold
linings, which are so well-adapted for the
protection of the larva in an unprotected
burrow, with the cocoon of the Great Cer-
ceris, lying under the dry shelter of a slab of
sandstone and at a distance of eighteen or
twenty inches underground: this cocoon has
the shape of a very long pear, with the nar-
row end lopped off. It consists of a single
silken wrapper, so thin and fine that the larva
shows through it. In my numerous ento-
mological investigations, I have always seen
the larva's industry and the mother's thus
making good each other's deficiencies. In a
deep, well-sheltered abode, the cocoon is of a
light material; in a surface dwelling, exposed
to the inclemencies of the weather, the cocoon
is stoutly built.

Nine months elapse, during which a task is
performed wherein all is mystery. I skip
this period, filled with the dead secret of the
transformation, and, to come to the nymph,
pass at once from the end of September to the
first days of the following June. The larva
has cast its withered slough; the nymph, that
transitory organism, or rather that perfect
105

The Hunting Wasps

insect in swaddling-bands, motionlessly awaits
the awakening which will not take place for
another month to come. The legs, the
antennae, the exposed mouth-parts and the
wing-stumps have the appearance of clearest
crystal and lie evenly spread under the thorax
and the abdomen. The rest of the body is
an opaque white, very faintly smeared with
yellow. The middle four segments of the
abdomen carry a narrow and blunt extension
on either side. The last segment, termina-
ting above in a blade-like expansion shaped
like the sector of a circle, is equipped below
with two conical protuberances set side by
side: this makes in all eleven appendages
studding the outline of the abdomen. Such
is the delicate creature which, to become a
Sphex, must don a motley livery of black and
red and throw off the fine skin in which it is
closely swathed.

I was curious to follow from day to day
the appearance and the progress of the
nymph's colouring and to test whether the
light of the sun, that rich palette whence na-
ture derives her colours, could influence that
progress. With this object, I took pupae
from their cocoons and put them in glass
tubes, of which some, kept in complete dark-
io6

The Larva and the Nymph

ness, realized the natural conditions of the
nymphs and served me as a standard of com-
parison, while the others, hung against a
white wall, received a strong diffused light
throughout the day. Under these diametric-
ally opposed conditions, the evolution of the
colours remained absolutely uniform in both
cases, or, if there were some slight dis-
crepancies, these were to the disadvantage of
the pupas exposed to the light. It is, there-
fore, exactly the reverse of what happens in
the case of plants: light does not affect the
colouring of insects, does not even accelerate
the process; and this must be so, because, in
the species which are the most brilliant in
colouring, the Buprestes and Ground-beetles,
for instance, the wondrous hues which one
would imagine to be stolen from a sunbeam
are really elaborated in the dusky bowels of
the earth or deep down in the decaying trunk
of some venerable tree.

The first outlines of colour show on the
eyes, whose faceted cornea changes success-
ively from white to fawn, next to slate-grey,
lastly to black. The simple eyes at the top
of the forehead, the ocelli, share in this
colouring, in their turn, before the rest of the
body has yet lost any of its neutral, white
107

The Hunting Wasps

tint. It should be remarked that this early
development of the most delicate organ^ the
eye, Is general in all animals. Later, a
smoky line appears on the upper part of the
groove separating the mesothorax and the
metathorax; and, twenty-four hours later, the
whole back of the metathorax is black. At
the same time, the edge of the prothorax be-
comes shaded, a black dot appears in the
central and upper part of the metathorax and
the mandibles assume a rusty tinge. Gradu-
ally a deeper and deeper shade creeps over
the two end segments of the thorax and
finally reaches the head and the hind-quarters.
A day is enough to turn the smoky hue of the
head and of the end segments deep black.
Thereupon the abdomen begins to share in
the rapidly-increasing coloration. The edge
of its front segments is tinted saffron; and its
hinder segments acquire a dull-black border.
Lastly, the antennas and legs, after passing
through darker and darker shades, turn
black; the lower part of the abdomen is now
entirely orange-red and the tip black. The
livery is complete except for the tarsi and the
mouth-parts, which are a transparent red,
and the wing-stumps, which are dull black.
io8

The Larva and the Nymph

In four-and-twenty hours the nymph will
burst its fetters.

It takes the nymph only six or seven days
to don its final tints, omitting the eyes, whose
colouring precedes that of the rest of the
body by fourteen or fifteen days. The law
governing the insect's chromatic evolution is
easily gathered from this brief sketch. We
see that, with the exception of the eyes and the
ocelli, whose early development recalls what
takes place in the higher animals, the start-
ing-point of the coloration is a central spot,
the mesothorax, whence it gradually invades,
by centrifugal progression, first the rest of
the thorax, then the head and abdomen, lastly
the different appendages, the legs and an-
tennae. The tarsi and the mouth-parts col-
our later still; and the wings do not assume
their hue until after they are taken from
their cases.

We now have the Sphex arrayed in her
livery. She has yet to cast her nymphal
wrapper. This is a very fine tunic, moulded
exactly in accordance with the smallest struc-
tural details and scarcely veiling the shape
and colours of the perfect insect. As a pre-
lude to the last act of the metamorphosis, the
109

The Hunting Wasps

Sphex, suddenly shaking off her torpor, begins
to move about violently, as though to call her
long-numbed hmbs to life. The abdomen is
alternately lengthened and shortened; the
legs are abruptly extended, then bent, then
extended again; and their different joints are
stiffened with an effort. The insect, using its
head and the tip of its abdomen as a lever,
with the ventral surface underneath, repeat-
edly distends with vigorous jerks the joint of
the neck and that of the peduncle connecting
the abdomen and the thorax. At last its
efforts are crowned with success; and, after
a quarter of an hour of these rough gym-
nastics, the scabbard, tugged in every direc-
tion, rips open at the neck, at the point where
the legs are attached and near the peduncle of
the abdomen, in short, wherever the mobility
of the parts has permitted any violent dis-
location to take place.

All these rents in the veil that is being cast
result in a number of irregular shreds, where-
of the largest envelops the abdomen and runs
up the back of the thorax. To this shred be-
long the wing-cases. A second shred covers
the head. Lastly, each leg has its own
sheath, more or less badly treated near the
base. The large shred, which in itself forms
no

The Larva and the Nymph

the best part of the wrapper, is thrown off by
means of alternate contractions and expan-
sions of the abdomen. By this mechanical
process it is slowly forced backwards, where
It ends by forming a little pellet that for some
time remains fastened to the Insect by the
tracheal gills. The Sphex then once more
becomes motionless; and the operation is over.
However, the head, antennae and legs are still
more or less veiled. It is evident that the
legs in particular cannot be freed all in one
piece, because of the numerous excrescences
or spines with which they are armed. These
different shreds of skin dry up on the insect
and are removed afterwards by rubbing the
legs. It is not until the Sphex has acquired
her full vigour that she finishes her moulting
by brushing, smoothing and combing her
whole body with her tarsi.

The way in which the wings come out of
their sheaths is the most remarkable part of
the sloughing. In their Incomplete stump
stage, they are folded lengthwise and are very
much compressed. It is easy to extract them
from their cases a little while before the
normal date of their appearance; but then
they remain permanently contracted and do
not fill out. On the other hand, when once
MI

The Hunting Wasps

the large strip of skin to which the sheaths
of the wings belong is pushed back by the
movements of the abdomen, we see the wings
come slowly out of their cases and straight-
way, as they become free, assume dimensions
out of all proportion to the narrow prison
whence they emerge. They are therefore
the seat of an abundant rush of vital fluids
which swell them and spread them out and
which, owing to the inflation which they pro-
voke, must be the chief cause of the wings'
emergence from their cases. When newly
expanded, the wings are heavy, full of juices
and of a very pale straw-colour. If the rush
of the fluids takes place irregularly, we then
see the end of the wing weighed down by a
little yellow drop contained between the two

After stripping herself of the abdominal
sheath, which carries the wing-cases with it,
the Sphex relapses into immobility for about
three days. During this time, the wings
assume their normal hue, the tarsi become
coloured and the mouth-parts, at first ex-
tended, adopt their proper position. After
twenty-four days spent in the nymphal stage,
the insect has achieved the perfect state. It
tears the cocoon that holds it captive, opens

112

The Larva and the Nymph

Itself a passage through the sand and comes
out one fine morning into the light of day,
undazzled by that hitherto unknown radiance.
Bathed in sunshine, the Sphex brushes her
antennae and her wings, passes and repasses
her legs over her abdomen, washes her eyes
with her front tarsi wetted with saliva, like a
cat; and, her toilet finished, flies away joy-
fully: she has two months to live.

You pretty Sphex-wasps hatched before
my eyes, brought up by my hand, ration by
ration, on a bed of sand in an old quill-box;
you whose transformations I have followed
step by step, starting up from my sleep in
alarm lest I should have missed the moment
when the nymph is bursting its swaddling-
bands or the wing leaving its case; you who
have taught me so much and learnt nothing
yourselves, knowing without teachers all that
you have to know : O my pretty Sphex-wasps,
fly away without fear of my tubes, my boxes,
my bottles, or any of my receptacles, through
this warm sunlight beloved of the Cicadae; ^
go, but beware of the Praying Mantis,^ who
is plotting your ruin on the flowering heads

^Cf. Social Life in the Insect IVorld: chaps, i. to iv. —
Translator's Note.

-Ci. Social Life in the Insect IVorld: chaps, v. to vii
— Translator's Note.

113

The Hunting Wasps

of the thistles, and mind the Lizard, who is
lying in wait for you on the sunny slopes ; go
in peace, dig your burrows, stab your Crickets
scientifically and continue your kind, to pro-
cure one day for others what you have given
me: the few moments of happiness in my
life!

114

CHAPTER VII

ADVANCED THEORIES

THE species of the genus Sphex are fairly
numerous, but are for the most part
strangers to my country. As far as I know,
the French fauna numbers only three, all
lovers of the hot sun of the olive district,
namely, the Yellow-winged Sphex {Sphex
flavipennis) , the White-edged Sphex {S.
albisecta) and the Languedocian Sphex {S.
occitanica) . Now it is not without a lively
interest that the observer notices in the case
of these three freebooters a choice of pro-
visions which is in strict accordance with the
rigid laws of entomological classification.
To feed their grubs, all three choose solely
Orthoptera.^ The first hunts Crickets, the
second Locusts, the third Ephipplgers.

The prey selected have such great outward
differences one from the other that to asso-
ciate them and grasp their similarity calls for

^The order of insects including Earwigs, Cockroaches,
Mantes, Crickets, Locusts and Grasshoppers. — Trans'
lator's Note.

"5

The Hunting Wasps

the practised eye of the entomologist or the
no less experienced eye of the Sphex. Pray
compare the Cricket with the Locust: the
first has a large, round, stumpy head, is short
and thickset and black all over, with red
stripes on his hinder thighs; the second is
greyish in colour, long and slim, with a small,
tapering head, leaps forward by suddenly un-
bending his long hind-legs and continues this
flight with wings furled like a fan. Next
compare both of these with the Ephlppiger,
who carries his musical Instrument, two shrill
cymbals shaped like concave scales, on his
back and who waddles along with his pendu-
lous belly, ringed pale-green and buttercup-
yellow and armed with a long dirk. Place
the three side by side and you will agree with
me that, to guide her In choosing between
such dissimilar species, while still keeping to
the same entomological order, the Sphex must
have an eye so expert that no man -— not
your ordinary layman, but a man of science
— need be ashamed to. own It.

In the face of these singular predilections,
which seem to have had their limits laid down
for them by some master of classification, by
a LatrelUe, for Instance, It becomes Interest-
ing to Investigate whether the Sphex-wasps
ii6

Advanced Theories

that are not natives of our country hunt game
of the same order. Unfortunately, informa-
tion on this point Is scanty and, In the case of
most of the species, is lacking altogether.
The chief cause of this regrettable lacuna is
the superficial method generally adopted.
People catch an Insect, stick a long pin
through it, fix It in the cork-bottomed box,
gum a label with a Latin name underneath
its feet and let Its history end there. It is not
thus that I understand the duties of an ento-
mological biographer. It is no use telling
me that this or that species has so many joints
to its antennae, so many nervures to its wings,
so many hairs on a region of the belly or
thorax; I do not really know the insect until
I am acquainted with its manner of life, its
instincts and its habits.

And see the immense and luminous ad-
vantage which a description of this kind, told
in two or three words, would possess over
those long descriptive details, sometimes so
hard to grasp. Suppose that you wish to
make the Languedocian Sphex known to me
and you begin by describing the number and
distribution of the nervures of the wings; you
speak to me of cubital nervures and recur-
rent nervures. Next comes the insect's pen-
ny

The Hunting Wasps

portrait Black here, rusty red there, smoky
brown at the tips of the wings; black velvet
in this part, silvery down in that, a smooth
surface in a third. It is all very definite and
minute : we must do this much justice to the
precision and patience of the narrator; but it
is very long and also it is by no means always
clear, so much so that we may be excused if we
are not quite able to follow it, even when we
are not altogether new to the business. But
add to the tedious description merely this:
" Hunts Ephippigers; " and these two words
at once shed light: there is no possibility of
my now mistaking my Sphex, for she alone
possesses the monopoly of that particular
prey To give this illuminating note, what
would be needed? The habit of really ob-
serving and of not making entomology con-
sist of so many series of impaled insects.

But let us pass on and examine the little
that is known about the hunting-methods of
the foreign Sphex-wasps. I open Lepeletier
de Saint-Fargeau's 1 Natural History of

lAmedee Comte Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau (1769-
circa i8so), author of an Histoire naturelledes tnsectes
(1836-1846) and of the volume on insects ^n the E^fi/-
clo&ie mithodique. He was a younger brother of
Louis Michel and' Felix Lepeletier de Samt-Fargeau. the
members of the Convention.- Translators Note.

118

Advanced Theories

Hymenoptera and find that, on the other side
of the Mediterranean, in our Algerian
provinces, the Yellow-winged Sphex and the
White-edged Sphex retain the same habits
that characterize them here. They capture
Orthoptera In the land of palm-trees even as
they do in the land of olive-trees. Though
separated from the others by the vast width
of the sea, the hunting compatriots of the
Kabyles and the Berbers pursue the same
game as their kindred in Provence. I also
see that a fourth species, the African Sphex
{S. afra), is the scourge of the Locusts in the
neighbourhood of Oran, Lastly, I remember
reading, I forget where, of a fifth species
which also wages war on Locusts In the
steppes near the Caspian. Thus, on the
borders of the Mediterranean, we have five
different species of Sphex, whose larvae all live
on a diet of Orthoptera,

Now let us cross the equator and go right
down to the southern hemisphere, to the
islands of Mauritius and Reunion: we shall
here find not a Sphex, but a closely-allied
Wasp of the same tribe, the Compressed
Chlorlon, hunting the horrible Kakerlak, that
ravager of the foodstuffs In the ships and
harbours of the colonies. These Kakerlaks
119

The Hunting Wasps

are none other than Cockroaches, whereof
one species haunts our dwellings. Who does
not know the evil-smelling insect, which,
thanks to its flat body, like that of a huge Bug,
slips at night through the gaps in furniture
and the crannies of partitions and invades any
place containing provisions to be devoured?
This is the Blackbeetle of our houses, a dis-
gusting counterpart of the no less disgusting
prey beloved of the Chlorion. What is there
about the Kakerlak to cause him to be selected
as a prey by a near cousin of our Sphex-
wasps? It is quite simple: with his Bug
shape, the Kakerlak also is an Orthopteron,
just as much as the Cricket, the Ephippiger
or the Locust. From these six examples, the
only ones known to me and of such different
origins, we might perhaps deduce that all the
Sphex hunt Orthoptera. At any rate, with-
out adopting so general a conclusion, we see
what the food of their hrvx must be in most

C3.SCS-

There is a reason for this surprising choice.
What is it ? What are the grounds for a diet
which, within the strict limits of one_ ento-
mological order, is composed here of stinking
Kakerlaks, there of somewhat dry, but highly-
flavoured Locusts, elsewhere again of plump
1 20

Advanced Theories

Crickets or fat Ephlpplgers? I confess that
I cannot tell, that I am absolutely in the dark;
and I leave the problem to others. At the
same time, we may observe that the Orthop-
tera are among insects what the Ruminants
are among mammals. Endowed with a
mighty paunch and a placid temperament,
they graze contentedly and soon put on flesh.
They are numerous, widely distributed and
slow in movement, which renders them easy
to catch; moreover, they are of a large size,
making fine heads of game. Who can say
if the Sphex-wasps, powerful huntresses, re-
quiring big prey, do not find In these Rumi-
nants of the insect world what we ourselves
find In our domestic Ruminants, the Sheep and
the Ox, peaceable victims yielding plenty of
flesh? It is just a possibility, but no more.
I have something better than a possibility
to offer in reply to another and no less im-
portant question. Do the Orthopteron-eat-
ers ever vary their diet? Should the favour-
ite type of game fall short, can they not accept
a different one? Does the Languedoclan
Sphex consider that there is nothing in the
world worth having but fat Ephlpplgers?
Does the White-edged Sphex allow none but
Locusts to figure on her table ; and the Yellow-

121

The Hunting Wasps

winged Sphex none but Crickets? Or, ac-
cording to time, place and circumstances, does
each make up for the lack of her favourite
victuals by others more or less equivalent?
To ascertain such facts, if they exist, would be
of the greatest importance, for they would tell
us if the inspirations of instinct are absolute
and unchangeable, or if they vary and within
what limits. It is true that the cells of one
and the same Cerceris contain the most varied
species of either the Buprestis or the Weevil
group, which shows that the huntress has a
great latitude of choice; but this extension of
the hunting-fields cannot be presumed in the
case of the Sphex-wasps, whom I have seen so
faithful to an exclusive victim, always the
same for each of them, and who moreover
find, among the Orthoptera, groups that differ
very widely in shape. Nevertheless, I have
had the good fortune to come upon one case,
one only, of complete change In the larva's
nourishment; and I record it the more will-
ingly in the Sphegian archives inasmuch as
such facts, scrupulously observed, will one
day form foundation-stones for any one who
cares to build up the psychology of instinct
on a solid basis.

Here are the facts. The scene Is enacted

122

Advanced Theories

on a towing-path along the Rhone. On one
side is the mighty stream, with its roaring
waters; on the other is a thick hedge of
osiers, willows and reeds; between the two
runs a narrow walk, with a carpet of fine
sand. A Yellow-winged Sphex appears,
hopping along, dragging her prey. What do
I see ! The prey is not a Cricket, but a com-
mon Acridian, a Locust ! And yet the Wasp
is really the Sphex with whom I am so
familiar, the Yellow-winged Sphex, the keen
Cricket-huntress. I can hardly believe the
evidence of my own eyes.

The burrow is not far off : the insect enters
it and stores away the booty. I sit down, de-
termined to wait for a new expedition, to wait
hours if necessary, so that I may see if the
extraordinary capture is repeated. My sit-
ting attitude makes me take up the whole
width of the path. Two raw conscripts
heave in sight, their hair newly cut, wearing
that inimitable automaton look which the
first days of barrack-life bestow. They are
chatting together, talking no doubt of home
and the girl they left behind them; and each
is innocently whittling a willow-switch with
his knife. I am seized with a sudden ap-
prehension. Ah, it is no easy matter to ex-
123

The Hunting Wasps

perlment on the public road, where, when the
long-awaited event occurs at last, the arrival
of a wayfarer is likely to disturb or ruin
opportunities that may never return ! I rise,
anxiously, to make way for the conscripts; I
stand back in the osier-bed and leave the
narrow passage free. To do more would
have been unwise. To say, " Don't go this
way, my good lads," would have made bad
worse. They would have suspected some
trap hidden under the sand, giving rise to
questions to which no reply that I could have
made would have sounded satisfactory. Be-
sides, my request would have turned those
idlers into lookers-on, very embarrassing com-
pany in such studies. I therefore got up
without speaking and trusted to my lucky star.
Alas and alack, my star betrayed me: the
heavy regulation boot came straight down
upon the ceiling of the Sphex ! A shudder
ran through me as though I myself had re-
ceived the impress of the hobnailed sole.

When the conscripts had passed, I pro-
ceeded to save what I could of the ruined
burrow's contents. The Sphex was there,
crushed and mangled; and with her not only
the Locust whom I had seen carried down,
but two others as well, making three Locusts
124

Advanced Theories

in all instead of the usual Crickets. What
was the reason of this curious change ? Were
there no Crickets in the neighbourhood of the
burrow and was the distressed Wasp making
up for them with Locusts : a case of Hobson's
choice, in fact? I hesitate to believe it, for
there was nothing about the neighbourhood
to warrant the supposition that the favourite
game was absent. Another, luckier than I,
will unriddle this new and unknown mystery.
The fact remains that the Yellow-winged
Sphex, either from imperious necessity or for
some reason that escapes me, sometimes re-
places her chosen prey, the Cricket, with
another prey, the Locust, presenting no ex-
ternal resemblance to the first, but itself also
an Orthopteron.

The observer on whose authority Lepele-
tler de Salnt-Fargeau says a word or two
touching the habits of this same Sphex wit-
nessed a similar storing away of Locusts in
Africa, near Oran. He surprised a Yellow-
winged Sphex dragging an Acridian along.
Was It an accidental case, like that which I
witnessed on the banks of the Rhone? Was
it an exception or the rule? Can there be a
lack of Crickets in the country around Oran
and does the Wasp fill their place with
125

The Hunting Wasps

Acridlans? The force of circumstances com-
pels me to put the question without finding a
reply.

This is the place to interpolate a certain
passage from Lacordaire's ^ Introduction to
Entomology against which I am eager to
protest. Here it is:

" Darwin, 2 who wrote a book on purpose
to prove the identity of the intellectual prin-

ijean Theodore Lacordaire (1801-1870), professor at
the university of Liege from 1835, author of Les Genera
des coleopteres, in twelve volumes, and of the Introduc-
tion a I'entomologie quoted above (1837-39). — Trans-
lator's Note.

^Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the poet and natural-
ist, grandfather of Charles Robert Darwin. The book
from which the above passage is quoted is Zoonomia,
or, The La^vs of Organic Life (1794-1796) ; but the
reader will note that the author withdraws these com-
ments in a later essay (cf. The Mason-bees, by J. Henri
Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos:
chap, vii.), where he explains that they are due to a
misquotation or mistranslation made by Lacordaire, who
wrote " a Sphex " where Darwin, as his grandson
pointed out to Fabre, had written " a Wasp," meaning
the Common or Social Wasp. It was open to me to
suppress this part of the chapter; but, in that case, there
would have been so little left of the original and so
small an excuse for the title that I might as readily have
suppressed the whole chapter, a liberty which I did not
feel justified in taking. Besides, the footnote to the
aforementioned chapter of The Mason-bees, which pre-
cedes the present volume in the English edition, makes
sufficient amends for any injury done to the elder Dar-
win's reputation here- — Translator's Note.

126

Advanced Theories

ciple actuating men and animals, was walking
one day in his garden when he saw on the
path a Sphex who had just possessed herself
of a Fly almost as large as herself. He saw
her cut off the victim's head and abdomen
with her mandibles, keeping only the thorax,
to which the wings remained attached, after
which she flew away; but a breath of wind,
striking the Fly's wings, made the Sphex spin
round and prevented her progress; hereupon
she alighted again on the path, cut off one of
the Fly's wings and then the other and, after
thus destroying the cause of her difficulties,
resumed her flight with what remained of her
prey. This fact carries with It manifest signs
of reasoning-power. Instinct might have led
this Sphex to cut off her victim's wings before
carrying it to her nest, as do some species of
the same genus; but here there was a sequence
of ideas and results from those ideas, which
are quite inexplicable unless we allow the in-
tervention of reason."

This little story, which so lightly grants
reason to an insect, lacks I will not say truth,
but even mere likelihood, not in the act itself,
which I accept without reserve, but In the
motives for the act. Darwin saw what he
127

The Hunting Wasps

tells us; only, he was mistaken as to the hero-
ine of the drama, the drama itself and its
signilicance. He was profoundly mistaken;
and I will prove it.

First of all, the old English scientist was
bound to know enough about the creatures to
which he gives these high dignities to call
things by their right names. Let us there-
fore take the word Sphex in its strict scientific
meaning. Under this assumption, by what
strange aberration was this English Sphex, if
any such there be, choosing a Fly for her prey,
when her kinswomen hunt such different
game, Orthoptera ? Even admitting what I
consider to be inadmissible, a Fly to form the
quarry of a Sphex, other difficulties come
crowding up. It is now duly proved that the
Burrowing Wasps do not take dead bodies to
their larvse, but a victim merely numbed,
paralysed. Then what is the meaning of this
prey of which the Sphex cuts off the head, the
abdomen, the wings? The stump carried
away is no more than a fragment of a corpse,
which would infect the cell with its rotten-
ness, without being of any use to the larva,
whose hatching is not due for some days yet.
It is as clear as daylight: when making his
observation, Darwin did not have before him
128

Advanced Theories

a Sphex in the strict sense of the word.
Then what did he see?

The term Fly, by which the captured prey
is designated, is a very elastic word, which
can be applied to the immense order of
Diptera and which therefore leaves us unde-
cided among thousands of species. The ex-
pression Sphex is most likely also employed
in an equally indefinite sense. At the end of
the eighteenth century, when Darwin's book
appeared, this expression was used to denote
not only the Sphegids proper, but particularly
the Crabronidae. Now, among the latter,
some, when storing provisions for their larvae,
hunt Diptera, Flies, the prey required by the
unknown Hymenopteron of the English
naturalist. Then was Darwin's Sphex a
Crabro? No; for these Dipteron-hunters,
like the hunters of any other prey, want game
that keeps fresh, motionless but half-alive, for
the fortnight or three weeks required for the
hatching of the eggs and the complete de-
velopment of the larvae. All these little
ogres need meat killed that day and not gone
bad or even a little high. This is a rule to
which I know of no exception. The word
Sphex cannot be accepted therefore, even with
its old meaning,

129

The Hunting Wasps

Instead of a precise fact, really worthy of
science, we have a riddle to read. Let us con-
tinue to examine the riddle. Different species
of the Crabro family are so like the Social
Wasps in size, in shape and in their black-and-
yellow livery as to deceive any eye unversed
in the delicate distinctions of entomology.
To any one who has not made a special study
of such subjects a Crabro is a Common Wasp.
May It not have happened that the English
observer, looking at things from a height and
thinking unworthy of strict investigation the
tiny fact which nevertheless was to cor-
roborate his transcendental theories and help
to bestow reason upon an animal, made a mis-
take In his turn, but one in the other direction
and quite pardonable, by taking a Wasp for a
Crabro? I would almost dare swear so;
and here are my reasons.

Wasps, if not always, at least often bring
up their family on animal food; but, instead
of accumulating a provision of game in each
cell beforehand, they distribute the food to
the larvce, one by one and several times a day ;
they feed them with their mouths, as the
father and mother feed young birds with
their beaks. And the mouthful consists of
a fine mash of chewed insects, ground between
130

Advanced Theories

the mandibles of the Wasp nurse. The
favourite insects for the preparation of this
infants' food are Diptera, especially Common
Flies; when fresh meat can be had, it is a
windfall eagerly turned to account. Who
has not seen Wasps boldly enter our kitchens
or pounce upon the meat hanging in the
butchers' shops, to cut off a scrap that suits
them and carry it away forthwith, as spolia
opima for the use of the grubs? When the
half-closed shutters admit a streak of sun-
light to the floor of a room, where the House-
fly is taking a luxurious nap or polishing her
wings, who has not seen the Wasp rush in,,
swoop down upon the Fly, crush her in her
mandibles and make off with the booty?
Once again, a morsel reserved for the car^
nivorous nurselings.

The prey is dismembered now on the spot
where captured, now on the way, now at the
nest. The wings, which possess no nutritive
value, are cut off and rejected; the legs, which
are poor in juices, are also sometimes dis*
dained. There remains a mutilated corpse^
head, thorax, abdomen, united or separatedj
which the Wasp chews and rechews to re^
duce It to the pap beloved of the larvae. I
have tried to take the place of the nurses im
131

The Hunting Wasps

this method of rearing grubs on Fly-soup.
The subject of my experiment was a nest of
PoUstes gallica, the Wasp who fastens her
httle rosette of brown-paper cells to the roots
of a shrub. My kitchen-table was a flat piece
of marble on which I crushed the Fly-pap
after cleaning the heads of game, that is to
say, after removing the parts that were too
tough, the wings and legs; lastly, the feeding-
spoon was a fine straw, at the tip of which the
dish was served, from cell to cell, to each
nurseling, which opened its mandibles just as
the young birds In the nest might do. I used
to go to work in exactly the same way and
succeeded no better when bringing up broods
of Sparrows, that joy of my childhood. All
went well as long as my patience did not fall
me, tried as it was by the cares of so finikin
and absorbing an education.

The obscurity of the enigma gives way to
the full light of truth thanks to the following
observation, made with all the dellberateness
which strict precision calls for. In the early
days of October, two large clumps of asters
In blossom outside the door of my study be-
came the meeting-place of a host of Insects,
among which the Hive-bee and an Erlstalls-
fly {Eristalis tenax) predominate. A gentle
132

Advanced Theories

murmur rose from them, Hke that of which
Virgil sings :

Sape levi somnum suadehit inire susurro}

But, where the poet finds but an incitement
to the dehghts of sleep, the naturalist beholds
a subject for study: all this small folk making
holiday on the last flowers of the year will
perhaps furnish him with some fresh data.
Behold me then on observation-duty before
the two clumps with their thousands of lilac
petals.

The air is absolutely still, the sun blazing,
the atmosphere heavy: signs of an approach-
ing storm, but conditions eminently favour-
able to the work of the Hymenoptera, who
seem to foresee to-morrow's rain and re-
double their activity to improve the oppor-
tunity. And so the Bees plunder eagerly,
while the Eristales fly clumsily from flower to
flower. At times, the peaceable multitude,
filling its crop with nectar, is disturbed by the
sudden invasion of the Wasp, a ravening in-
sect attracted hither by prey, not honey.

Equally ardent in carnage, but very unequal

1" The busy bees, with a soft murmuring strain,
Invite to gentle sleep the labouring swain." —

Pastorals, i., Dryden's translation.
133

The Hunting Wasps

in strength, two species divide the hunting
between them: the Common Wasp {Vespa
vulgaris)^ who catches Eristales, and the
Hornet {Vespa crabro), who preys on Hive-
bees. The methods are the same in either
case. Both bandits explore the expanse of
flowers with an impetuous flight, going back-
wards and forwards in a thousand directions,
and then make a sudden rush for the coveted
prey, which is on its guard and flies away
while the kidnapper's impetus brings her up
with a bump against the deserted flower.
Then the pursuit continues in the air, as
though a Sparrow-hawk were chasing a Lark.
But the Bee and the Eristalis, by taking brisk
turns, soon baffle the attempts of the Wasp,
who resumes her evolutions above the cluster-
ing blossoms. At last, sooner or later, some
quarry less quick at flight is captured.
Forthwith, the Common Wasp drops on to
the lawn with her Eristalis ; I also instantly lie
on the ground, quietly removing with my
hands the dead leaves and bits of grass that
might interfere with my view; and I witness
the following tragedy, if I have taken proper
precautions not to scare the huntress.

First, there is a wild struggle in the tangle
of the grass between the Wasp and the
134

Advanced Theories

Eristalls, who is bigger than her assailant.
The Fly is unarmed, but powerful; a shrill
buzz of her wings tells of her desperate re-
sistance. The Wasp carries a dagger; but
she does not understand the methodical use
of it, is unacquainted with the vulnerable
points so well-known to the marauders who
need a prey that keeps fresh for long. What
her nurselings want is a mess of Flies that
moment reduced to pulp; and, so long as this
Is achieved, the Wasp cares little how the
game is killed. The sting therefore is used
blindly, without any method. We see it
pointed indifferently at the victim's back,
sides, head, thorax or belly, according to the
chances of the scuffle. The Hunting Wasp
paralysing her victim acts like a surgeon who
directs his scalpel with a skilled hand; the
Social Wasp killing her prey behaves like a
common assassin who stabs at random. For
this reason, the Eristalis' resistance is pro-
longed; and her death Is the result of scissor-
cuts rather than dagger-thrusts. When the
victim is duly garrotted, motionless between
its ravisher's legs, the head falls under a snap
of the mandibles; then the wings are cut off
at their juncture with the shoulder; the legs
follow, severed one by one; lastly, the belly
135

The Hunting Wasps

Is flung aside, but emptied of the entrails,
which the Wasp appears to add to the one
favoured portion. This choice morsel is
solely the thorax, which is richer in lean meat
than the rest of the Eristalis' body. Without
further delay, the Wasp flies off with it, carry-
ing it in her legs. On reaching the nest, she
will make it into potted Fly and serve it in
mouthfuls to the larvae.

The Hornet who has caught a Bee acts in
much the same manner; but, in the case of an
assailant of her dimensions, the straggle can-
not last long, notwithstanding the victim's
sting. The Hornet may prepare her dish on
the very flower where the capture was ef-
fected, or more often on some twig of an
adjacent shrub. The Bee's crop Is first
ripped open and the honey that runs out of It
lapped up. The prize is thus a twofold one :
a drop of honey for the huntress to feast upon
and the Bee herself for the larvae. Some-
times the wings are removed and also the
abdomen ; but generally the Hornet Is satisfied
with reducing the Bee to a shapeless mass,
which she carries off without disdaining any-
thing. Those parts which have no nutritive
value, especially the wings, will be rejected on
arriving at the nest. Lastly, she sometimes
136

Advanced Theories

prepares the mash in the actual hunting-field,
that is to say, she crushes the Bee between
her mandibles after removing the wings, the
legs and at times the abdomen as well.

Here then, in all its details, is the incident
observed by Darwin. A Wasp {Vespa vul-
garis) catches a big Fly {Eris talis tenax) ;
she cuts off the victim's head, wings, abdomen
and legs with her mandibles and keeps only
the thorax, which she carries off flying.^ But
here there is not the least breath of wind to
explain the carving-process; besides, the thing
happens in a perfect sheker, in the thick
tangle of the grass. The butcher rejects such
parts of her prey as she considers valueless to
her larvae ; and that is all about it.

In short, the heroine of Darwin's story is
certainly a Wasp. Then what becomes of
that rational calculation on the part of the
insect which, the better to contend with the
wind, cuts off its prey's abdomen, head and
wings and keeps only the thorax? It be-
comes a most simple incident, leading to none
of the mighty consequences which the writer
seeks to deduce from it : the very trivial inci-
dent of a Wasp who begins to carve up he;*
prey on the spot and keeps only the stump,
the one part which she considers fit for her
137

The Hunting Wasps

larvae. Far from seeing the least sign of
reason In this, I look upon it as a mere act of
instinct, one so elementary that it is really not
worth expatiating upon.

To disparage man and exalt animals in
order to establish a point of contact, followed
by a point of union, has been and still is the
general tendency of the " advanced theories "
in fashion in our day. Ah, how often are
these " sublime theories," that morbid craze
of the time, based upon " proofs " which, if
subjected to the light of experiment, would
lead to as ridiculous results as the learned
Erasmus Darwin's Sphexl

138

CHAPTER VIII

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SPHEX

WHEN the chemist has fully prepared his
plan of research, he mixes his reagent
at the most convenient moment and lights a
flame under his retort. He is the master of
time, place and circumstances. He chooses
his hour, shuts himself up in his laboratory,
where nothing can come to disturb the busi-
ness in hand; he produces at will this or that
condition which reflection suggests to him : he
is in quest of the secrets of inorganic matter,
whose chemical activities science can awaken
whenever it thinks fit.

The secrets of living matter — not those
of anatomical structure, but really those of
life in action, especially of instinct — present
much more difiicult and delicate conditions to
the observer. Far from being able to choose
his own time, he is the slave of the season,
of the day, of the hour, of the very moment.
When the opportunity offers, he must seize it
as it comes, without hesitation, for it may be
long before it presents itself again. And, as
139

The Hunting Wasps

It usually arrives at the moment when he is
least expecting it, nothing Is in readiness for
making the most of it. He must then and
there Improvise his little stock of experiment-
ing-materlal, contrive his plans, evolve his
tactics, devise his tricks; and he can think
himself lucky if inspiration comes fast enough
to allow him to profit by the chance offered.
This chance, moreover, hardly ever comes
except to those who look for it. You must
watch for it patiently for days and days, now
on sandy slopes exposed to the full glare of
the sun, now on some path walled in by high
banks, where the heat Is like that of an oven,
or again on some sandstone ledge which Is
none too steady. If It is in your power to
set up your observatory under a meagre olive-
tree that pretends to protect you from the
rays of a pitiless sun, you may bless the fate
that treats you as a sybarite : your lot Is an
Eden. Above all, l^eep your eyes open. The
spot is a good one ; and — who knows ? — the
opportunity may come at any moment.

It came, late, it Is true; but still it came.
Ah, If you could now observe at your ease, In
the quiet of your study, with nothing to dis-
tract your mind from your subject, far from
the profane wayfarer who, seeing you so
140

The Languedoclan Sphex

busily occupied at a spot where he sees no-
thing, will stop, overwhelm you with que-
ries, take you for some water-diviner, or —
a graver suspicion this — regard you as some
questionable character searching for buried
treasure and discovering by means of incanta-
tions where the old pots full of coin he hid-
den ! Should you still wear a Christian as-
pect in his eyes, he will approach you, look to
see what you are looking at and smile in a
manner that leaves no doubt as to his poor
opinion of people who spend their time in
watching Flies. You will be lucky indeed if
the troublesome visitor, with his tongue in his
cheek, walks off at last without disturbing
things and without repeating in his innocence
the disaster brought about by my two con-
scripts' boots.

Should your inexplicable doings not puzzle
the passer-by, they will be sure to puzzle the
village keeper, that uncompromising repre-
sentative of the law in the ploughed acres.
He has long had his eye on you. He has so
often seen you wandering about, like a lost
soul, for no appreciable reason; he has so
often caught you rooting in the ground, or,
with infinite precautions, knocking down some
strip of wall in a sunken road, that in the end
141

The Hunting Wasps

he has come to look upon you with dark sus-
picion. You are nothing to him but a gipsy,
a tramp, a poultry-thief, a shady person or, at
the best, a madman. Should you be carrying
your botanizing-case, it will represent to him
the poacher's ferret-cage; and you would
never get it out of his head that, regardless
of the game-laws and the rights of landlords,
you are clearing all the neighbouring warrens
of their rabbits. Take care. However
thirsty you may be, do not lay a finger on
the nearest bunch of grapes: the man with
the municipal badge will be there, delighted
to have a case at last and so to receive an ex-
planation of your highly perplexing beha-
viour.

I have never, I can safely say, committed any
such misdemeanour; and yet, one day, lying
on the sand, absorbed in the details of a Bem-
bex' household, I suddenly heard beside me :

" In the name of the law, I arrest you !
You come along with me ! "

It was the keeper of Les Angles, who, after
vainly waiting for an opportunity to catch me
at fault and being daily more anxious for an
answer to the riddle that was worrying him,
at last resolved upon the brutal expedient of
a summons. I had to explain things. The
142

The Languedocian Sphex

poor man seemed anything but convinced:
"Pooh!" he said. "Pooh! You will
never make me believe that you come here
and roast in the sun just to watch FHes. I
shall keep an eye on you, mark you ! And,
the first time I . . . ! However, that'll do
for the present."

And he went off. I have always believed
that my red ribbon had a good deal to do
with his departure. And I also put down to
that red ribbon certain other little services by
which I benefited during my entomological
and botanical excursions. It seemed to me

or was I dreaming? — it seemed to me

that, on my botanizing-expeditions up Mont
Ventoux, the guide was more tractable and
the donkey less obstinate.

The aforesaid bit of scarlet ribbon did not
always spare me the tribulations which the
entomologist must expect when experiment-
ing on the public way. Here is a character-
istic example. Ever since daybreak I have
been ambushed, sitting on a stone, at the bot-
tom of a ravine. The subject of my matu-
tinal visit is the Languedocian Sphex. Three
women, vine-pickers, pass in a group, on the
way to their work. They give a glance at
the man seated, apparently absorbed in reflec-
ts

The Hunting Wasps

tlon. At sunset, the same pickers pass again,
carrying their full baskets on their heads.
The man is still there, sitting on the same
stone, with his eyes fixed on the same place.
My motionless attitude, my long persistency
in remaining at that deserted spot, must have
impressed them deeply. As they passed by
me, I saw one of them tap her forehead and
heard her whisper to the others:

" Un paoiire inoucent, peca'ire! "

And all three made the sign of the Cross.

An innocent, she had said, un inoucent, an
Idiot, a poor creature, quite harmless, but
half-witted; and they had all made the sign
of the Cross, an idiot being to them one with
God's seal stamped upon him.

" How now ! " thought I. " What a cruel
mockery of fate ! You, who are so labori-
ously seeking to discover what is instinct in
the animal and what is reason, you yourself
do not even possess your reason in these good
women's eyes ! What a humiliating reflec-
tion!"

No matter: peca'ire, that expression of su-
preme compassion, in the Provencal dialect,
pecaire, coming from the bottom of the heart,
soon made me forget inoucent.

It is in this ravine with its three grape-
144

The Languedocian Sphex

gathering women that I would meet the
reader, if he be not discouraged by the petty
annoyances of which I have given him a fore-
taste. The Languedocian Sphex frequents
these points, not in tribes congregating at the
same spot when nest-building work begins,
but as solitary individuals, sparsely distrib-
uted, settling wherever the chances of their
vagabondage lead them. Even as her kins-
woman, the Yellow-winged Sphex, seeks the
society of her kind and the animation of a
yard full of workers, the Languedocian Sphex
prefers isolation, quiet and soHtude. Graver
of gait, more formal in her manners, of a
larger size and also more sombrely clad, she
always lives apart, not caring what others do,
disdaining company, a genuine misanthrope
among the Sphegidae. The one is sociable,
the other is not: a profound difference which
in itself is enough to characterize them.

This amounts to saying that, with the
Languedocian Sphex, the difficulties of ob-
servation increase. No long-meditated ex-
periment is possible in her case; nor, when
the first attempts have failed, can one hope to
try them again, on the same occasion, with a
second or a third subject and so on. If you
prepare the materials for your observation in
145

The Hunting Wasps

advance, If, for Instance, you have In reserve
a piece of game which you propose to substi-
tute for that of the Sphex, it is to be feared,
nay, it is almost certain that the huntress will
not appear; and, when she does come at last,
your materials are no longer fit for use and
everything has to be Improvised in a hurry,
that very moment, under conditions that are
not always satisfactory.

Let us take heart. The site Is a first-rate
one. Many a time already I have surprised
the Sphex here, sunning herself on a vine-leaf.
The insect, spread out flat, is basking voluptu-
ously in the heat and light. From time to
time it has a sort of frenzied outburst of
pleasure: it quivers with content; it rapidly
taps its feet on its couch, producing a tattoo
not unlike that of rain falling heavily on the
leaf. The joyous thrum can be heard several
feet away. Then immobility begins again,
soon followed by a fresh nervous commotion
and by the whirling of the tarsi, a symbol of
supreme felicity. I have known some of
these passionate sun-lovers suddenly to leave
the workyard, when the larva's cave has been
half-dug, and go to the nearest vine to take
a bath of heat and light, after which they
would come back to the burrow, as though re-
146

The Languedocian Sphex

luctantly, just to give a perfunctory sweep and
soon end by knocking off work, unable to re-
sist the exquisite temptation of luxuriating on
the vine-leaves.

It may be that the voluptuous couch is also
an observatory, whence the Wasp surveys the
surrounding country in order to discover and
select her prey. Her exclusive game is the
Ephippiger of the Vine, scattered here and
there on the branches or on any brambles
hard by. The joint is a substantial one, espe-
cially as the Sphex favours solely the females,
whose bellies are swollen with a mighty clus-
ter of eggs.

Let us take no notice of the repeated trips,
the fruitless searches, the tedium of frequent
long waiting, but rather present the Sphex
suddenly to the reader as she herself appears
to the observer. Here she is, at the bottom
of a sunken road with high, sandy banks.
She comes on foot, but gets help from her
wings in dragging her heavy prize. The
Ephippiger's antennae, long and slender as
threads, are the harnessing-ropes. Holdmg
her head high, she grasps one of them in her
mandibles. The antenna gripped passes be-
tween her legs; and the game follows, turned
over on its back. Should the soil be too un-
147

The Hunting Wasps

even and so offer resistance to this method of
carting, the Wasp clasps her unwieldy burden
and carries it with very short flights, inter-
spersed, as often as possible, with journeys on
foot. We never see her undertake a sus-
tained flight, for long distances, holding the
game in her legs, as is the practice of those
expert aviators, the Bembeces and Cerceres,
for instance, who bear through the air for
more than half a mile their respective Flies
or Weevils, a very light booty compared with
the huge Ephippiger. The overpowering
weight of her capture compels the Langue-
docian Sphex, to make the whole or nearly
the whole journey on foot, her method of
transport being consequently slow and labori-
ous.

The same reason, the bulk and weight of
the prey, have entirely reversed the usual or-
der which the Burrowing Wasps follow in
their operations. This order we know: it
consists in first digging a burrow and then
stocking It with provisions. As the victim is
not out of proportion to the strength of the
spoiler, it is quite simple to carry it flying,
which means that the Wasp can choose any
site that she likes for her dwelling. She does
not mind how far afield she goes for her
148

The Languedocian Sphex

prey: once she has captured her quarry, she
comes flying home at a speed which makes
questions of distance quite immaterial.
Hence she prefers as the site for her burrow
the place where she herself was born, the
place where her forbears lived; she here in-
herits deep galleries, the accumulated work
of earlier generations; and, by repairing them
a little, she makes them serve as approaches
to new chambers, which are in this way bet-
ter protected than they would be if they de-
pended upon the labours of a single Wasp,
who had to start boring from the surface
each year. This happens, for instance, in
the case of the Great Cerceris and the Bee-
eating Philanthus. And, should the ancestral
abode not be strong enough to withstand the
rough weather from one year to the next and
to be handed down to the offspring, should
the burrower have each time to start her tun-
nelling afresh, at least the Wasp finds greater
safety in places consecrated by the experience
of her forerunners. Consequently she goes
there to dig her galleries, each of which
serves as a corridor to a group of cells, thus
effecting an economy in the aggregate labour
expended upon the whole business of the lay-
ing.

149

The Hunting Wasps

In this way are formed not real societies,
for there are no concerted efforts towards a
common object, but at least assemblies where
the sight of her kinswomen and her neigh-
bours doubtless puts heart into the labour of
the individual. We can observe, in fact, be-
tween these little tribes, springing from the
same stock, and the burrowers who do their
work alone, a difference in activity which re-
minds us of the emulation prevailing in a
crowded yard and the indifference of labour-
ers who have to work in solitude. Action is
contagious in animals as in men; it is fired by
its own example.

To sum up : when of a moderate weight
for its captor, the prey can be conveyed flying,
to a great distance. The Wasp can then
choose any site that she pleases for her bur-
row. She adopts by preference the spot
where she was born and uses each passage as
a common corridor giving access to several
cells. The result of this meeting at a com-
mon birthplace is the formation of groups,
like turning to like, which is a source of
friendly rivalry. This first step towards so-
cial life comes from facilities for travelling.
Do not things happen in the same way with
man, if I may be permitted the comparison?
150

The Languedocian Sphex

When he has nothing but trackless paths, man
builds a solitary hut; when supplied with good
roads, he and his fellows collect in populous
cities; when served by railways which, so to
speak, annihilate distance, they assemble in
those immense human hives called London or
Paris.

The situation of the Languedocian Sphex is
just the reverse. Her prey is a heavy Ephip-
piger, a single dish representing by itself the
sum total of provisions which the other free-
booters amass on numerous journeys, insect
by insect. What the Cerceres and the other
plunderers strong on the wing accomplish by
dividing the labour she does in a single jour-
ney. The weight of the prey makes any dis-
tant flight impossible; it has to be brought
home slowly and laboriously, for it is a
troublesome business to cart things along the
ground. This alone makes the site of the
burrow dependent on the accidents of the
chase : the prey comes first and the dwelling
next. So there is no assembling at a com-
mon meeting-place, no association of kindred
spirits, no tribes stimulating one another in
their work by mutual example, but isolation in
the particular spot where the chances of the
day have taken the Sphex, solitary labour,
151

The Hunting Wasps

carried on without animation though with un-
faihng diligence. First of all, the prey is
sought for, attacked, reduced to helplessness.
Not until after that does the digger trouble
about the burrow. A favourable place is
chosen, as near as possible to the spot where
the victim lies, so as to cut short the tedious
work of transport; and the chamber of the
future larva is rapidly hollowed out and at
once receives the egg and the victuals.
There you have an example of the inverted
method of the Languedocian Sphex, a
method, as all my observations go to prove,
diametrically opposite to that of the other
Hymenoptera. I will give some of the more
striking of these observations.

When caught digging, the Languedocian
Sphex is always alone, sometimes at the bot-
tom of a dusty recess left by a stone that has
dropped out of an old wall, sometimes en-
sconced in the shelter formed by a flat, pro-
jecting bit of sandstone, a shelter much sought
after by the fierce Eyed Lizard to serve as an
entrance-hall to his lair. The sun beats full
upon it; it is an oven. The soil, consisting
of old dust that has fallen little by little from
the roof, is very easy to dig. The cell is
soon scooped out with the mandibles, those
152

The Languedocian Sphex

pincers which are also used for digging, and
the tarsi, which serve as rubbish-rakes.
Then the miner flies off, but with a slow flight
and no sudden display of wing-power, a mani-
fest sign that the insect is not contemplating
a distant expedition. We can easily follow
it with our eyes and perceive the spot where
it alights, usually ten or twelve yards away.
At other times, it decides to wall<:. It goes
off and mai<^es hurriedly for a spot where we
will have the indiscretion to follow it, for our
presence does not trouble it at all. On reach-
ing its destination, either on foot or on the
wing, it looks round for some time, as we
gather from its undecided attitude and its
journeys hither and thither. It looks round;
at last it finds or rather retrieves something.
The object recovered is an Ephippiger, half-
paralysed, but still moving her tarsi, antennae
and ovipositor. She is a victim which the
Sphex certainly stabbed not long ago with a
few stings. After the operation, the Wasp
left her prey, an embarrassing burden amid
the suspense of house-hunting; she abandoned
it perhaps on the very spot where she cap-
tured it, contenting herself with making it
more or less conspicuous by placing it on some
grass-tuft, in order to find it more easily
153

The Hunting Wasps

later; and, trusting to her good memory to
return presently to the spot where the booty
lies, she set out to explore the neighbourhood
with the object of finding a suitable site and
there digging a burrow. Once the home was
ready, she came back to her prize, which she
found again without much hesitation, and she
now prepares to lug it home. She bestrides
the victim, seizes one or both of the antennae
and off she goes, tugging and dragging with
all the strength of her loins and jaws.

Sometimes, she has only to make one jour-
ney; at other times and more often, the carter
suddenly plumps down her load and quickly
runs home. Perhaps it occurs to her that the
entrance-door is not wide enough to admit
so substantial a morsel; perhaps she remem-
bers some lack of finish that might hamper
the storing. And, in point of fact, the
worker does touch up her work : she enlarges
the doorway, smooths the threshold, strength-
ens the ceiling. It is all done with a few
strokes of the tarsi. Then she returns to
the Ephlppiger, lying yonder, on her back, a
few steps away. The hauling begins again.
On the road, the Sphex seems struck with a
new idea, which flashes through her quick
154

The Languedocian Sphex

brain. She has inspected the door, but has
not looked inside. Who knows if all is well
in there? She hastens to see, dropping the
Ephippiger before she goes. The interior is
inspected; and apparently a few pats of the
trowel are administered with the tarsi, giving
a last polish to the walls. Without lingering
too long over these delicate aftertouches, the
Wasp goes back to her booty and harnesses
herself to its antennas. Forward! Will the
journey be completed this time ? I would not
answer for it. I have known a Sphex, more
suspicious than the others, perhaps, or more
neglectful of the minor architectural details,
to repair her omissions, to dispel her doubts,
by abandoning her prize on the way five or
six times running, in order to hurry to the
burrow, which each time was touched up a
little or merely inspected within. It is true
that others make straight for their destina-
tion, without even stopping to rest. I must
also add that, when the Wasp goes home to
improve the dwelling, she does not fail to
give a glance from a distance every now and
then at the Ephippiger over there, to make
sure that nothing has happened to her. This
solicitude recalls that of the Sacred Beetle
155

The Hunting Wasps

when he leaves the hall which he is excavating
in order to come and feel his beloved pellet
and bring it a little nearer to him.

The inference to be drawn from the details
which I have related is manifest. The fact
that every Languedocian Sphex surprised in
her mining-operations, even though it be at
the very beginning of the digging, at the first
stroke of the tarsus in the dust, afterwards,
when the home is prepared, makes a short
excursion, now on foot, anon flying, and in-
variably finds herself in possession of a victim
already stabbed, already paralysed, compels
us to conclude, in all certainty, that this Wasp
does her work as a huntress first and as a
burrower after, so that the place of the cap-
ture decides the place of the home.

This reversal of procedure, which causes
the food to be prepared before the larder,
whereas hitherto we have seen the larder
come before the food, I attribute to the
weight of the Sphex' prey, a prey which it is
not possible to carry far through the air. It
is not that the Languedocian Sphex is ill-built
for flight: on the contrary, she can soar mag-
nificently; but the prey which she hunts would
weigh her down if she had no other support
than her wings. She needs the support of
156

The Languedocian Sphex

the ground for her haullng-work, in which
she displays wonderful strength. When
laden with her prey, she always goes afoot,
or takes but very short flights, even under
conditions when flight would save her time
and trouble. I will quote an instance taken
from my latest observations on this curious
Wasp.

A Sphex appears unexpectedly, coming I
know not whence. She is on foot, dragging
her Ephippiger, a capture which apparently
she has made that moment in the neighbour-
hood. In the circumstances, it behoves her
to dig herself a burrow. The site is as bad
as bad can be. It is a well-beaten path, hard
as stone. The Sphex, who has no time to
make laborious excavations, because the al-
ready captured prize must be stored as quickly
as possible, the Sphex wants soft ground,
wherein the larva's chamber can be contrived
in one short spell of work. I have described
her favourite soil, namely, the dust of years
which has accumulated at the bottom of some
hole in a wall or of some little shelter under
the rocks. Well, the Sphex whom I am now
observing stops at the foot of a house with a
newly-whitewashed front some twenty to
twenty-five feet high. Her instinct tells her
157

The Hunting Wasps

that up there, under the red tiles of the roof,
she will find nooks rich in old dust. She
leaves her prey at the foot of the house and
flies up to the roof. For some time, I see
her looking here, there and everywhere.
After finding a proper site, she begins to work
under the curve of a pantile. In ten minutes
or fifteen at most, the home is ready. The
insect now flies down again. The Ephip-
piger is promptly found. She has to be taken
up. Will this be done on the wing, as cir-
cumstances seem to demand? Not at all.
The Sphex adopts the toilsome method of
scaling a perpendicular wall, with a surface
smoothed by the mason's trowel and measur-
ing twenty to twenty-five feet in height. See-
ing her take this road, dragging the game
between her legs, I at first think the feat im-
possible; but I am soon reassured as to the
outcome of the bold attempt. Getting a
foothold on the little roughnesses in the mor-
tar, the plucky insect, despite the hindrance of
her heavy load, walks up this vertical plane
with the same assured gait and the same speed
as on level ground. The top is reached with-
out the least accident; and the prey is laid
temporarily on the edge of the roof, upon the
158

The Languedocian Sphex

rounded back of a tile. While the digger
gives a finishing touch to the burrow, the
badly-balanced prey slips and drops to the
foot of the wall. The thing must be done all
over again and once more by laboriously
climbing the height. The same mistake is re-
peated. Again the prey is incautiously left
on the curved tile, again it slips and again it
falls to the ground. With a composure
which accidents such as these cannot disturb,
the Sphex for the third time hoists up the
Ephippiger by scaling the wall and, better-
advised, drags her forthwith right into the
home.

As even under these conditions no attempt
has been made to carry the prey on the wing,
it is clear that the Wasp is incapable of long
flight with so heavy a load. To this in-
capacity we owe the few characteristics that
form the subject of this chapter. A quarry
that is not too big to permit the effort of fly-
ing makes of the Yellow-winged Sphex a
semisocial species, that is to say, one seeking
the company of her fellows; a quarry too
heavy to carry through the air makes of the
Languedocian Sphex a species vowed to soli-
tary labour, a sort of savage disdainful of
159

The Hunting Wasps

the pleasures that come from the proximity
of one's kind. The lighter or heavier weight
of the game selected here determines the
fundamental character of the huntress.

i6o

CHAPTER IX

THE WISDOM OF INSTINCT

TO paralyse her prey, the Languedoclan
Sphex, I have no doubt, pursues the
method of the Cricket-huntress and drives her
lancet repeatedly into the Ephippiger's breast
in order to strike the ganglia of the thorax.
The process of wounding the nerve-centres
must be familiar to her; and I am convinced
beforehand of her consummate skill in that
scientific operation. This is an art tho-
roughly known to all the Hunting Wasps,
who carry a poisoned dart that has not been
given them in vain. At the same time, I
must confess that I have never yet succeeded
in witnessing the deadly performance. This
omission is due to the solitary life led by the
Languedocian Sphex.

When a number of burrows are dug on a
common site and then provisioned, one has
but to wait on the spot to see how one hunt-
ress and now another arrive with the game
which they have caught. It is easy in these
circumstances to try upon the new arrivals the
i6i

The Hunting Wasps

substitution of a live prey for the doomed
victim and to repeat the experiment as often
as we wish. Besides, the certainty that we
shall not lack subjects of observation, as and
when wanted, enables us to arrange every-
thing in advance. With the Languedocian
Sphex, these conditions of success do not ex-
ist. To set out expressly to look for her,
with one's material prepared, is almost use-
less, as the solitary insect is scattered one by
one over vast expanses of ground. More-
over, if you do come upon her, it will most
often be in an idle hour and you will get no-
thing out of her. As I said before, it is
nearly always unexpectedly, when your
thoughts are elsewhere engaged, that the
Sphex appears, dragging her Ephlppiger
after her.

This is the moment, the only propitious
moment to attempt a substitution of prey and
invite the huntress to let you witness her
lancet-thrusts. Quick, let us procure an al-
ternative morsel, a live Ephippiger ! Hurry,
time presses : in a few minutes, the burrow
will have received the victuals and the glori-
ous occasion will be lost ! Must I speak of
my mortification at these moments of good
fortune, the mocking bait held out by chance ?
162

The Wisdom of Instinct

Here, before my eyes, is matter for interest-
ing observations; and I cannot profit by it!
I cannot surprise tiie Sphex' secret for the laclc
of something to offer her in the place of her
prize ! Try it for yourself, try setting out in
quest of an alternative piece with only a few
minutes at your disposal, when it took me
three days of wild running about before I
found Weevils for my Cerceres ! And yet I
made the desperate experiment twice over.
Ah, if the keeper had caught me this time,
tearing like mad through the vineyards, what
a good opportunity it would have been for
crediting me with robbery and having me up
before the magistrate! Vine-branches and
clusters of grapes: not a thing did I respect
in my mad rush, hampered by the trailing
shoots. I must have an Ephippiger at all
costs, I must have him that moment. And
once I did get my Ephippiger during one of
these frenzied expeditions. I was radiant
with joy, never suspecting the bitter disap-
pointment in store for me.

If only I arrive in time, if only the Sphex
be still engaged in transport work! Thank
heaven, everything is in my favour! The
Wasp is still some distance away from her
burrow and still dragging her prize along.
163

The Hunting Wasps

With my forceps I pull gently at it from
behind. The huntress resists, stubbornly
clutches the antennae of her victim and refuses
to let go. I pull harder, even drawing the
carter back as well; it makes no difference:
the Sphex does not loose her hold. I have
with me a pair of sharp scissors, belonging to
my little entomological case. I use them and
promptly cut the harness-ropes, the Ephip-
piger's long antennae. The Sphex continues
to move ahead, but soon stops, astonished at
the sudden decrease in the weight of the bur-
den which she is trailing, for this burden is
now reduced merely to the two antennae,
snipped off by my mischievous wiles. The
real load, the heavy, pot-bellied insect, re-
mains behind and is instantly replaced by my
live specimen. The Wasp turns round, lets
go the ropes that now draw nothing after
them and retraces her steps. She comes face
to face with the prey substituted for her own.
She examines it, walks round it gingerly, then
stops, moistens her foot with saliva and be-
gins to wash her eyes. In this attitude of
meditation, can some such thought as the fol-
lowing pass through her mind :

"Come now! Am I awake or am I
asleep? Do I know what I am about or do
164

The Wisdom of Instinct

I not? That thing's not mine. Who or
what is trying to humbug me? "

At any rate, the Sphex shows no great
hurry to attack my prey with her mandibles.
She keeps away from it and shows not the
smallest wish to seize it. To excite her, I
offer the insect to her in my fingers, I almost
thrust the antennae under her teeth. I know
that she does not suffer from shyness; I know
that she wjU come and take from your fingers,
without hesitation, the prey which you have
snatched from her and afterwards present
to her. But what is this? Scorning my of-
fers, the Sphex retreats instead of snapping
up what I place within her reach. I put
down the Ephippiger, who, obeying a
thoughtless impulse, unconscious of danger,
goes straight to his assassin. Now we shall
see ! Alas, no : the Sphex continues to recoil,
like a regular coward, and ends by flying
away. I never saw her again. Thus ended,
to my confusion, an experiment that had filled
me with such enthusiasm.

Later and by degrees, as I inspected an in-
creasing number of burrows, I came to under-
stand my failure and the obstinate refusal of
the Sphex. I always found the provisions to
consist, without a single exception, of a
165

The Hunting Wasps

female Ephlpplger, harbouring in her belly
a copious and succulent cluster of eggs. This
appears to be the favourite food of the grubs.
Well, in my hurried rush through the vines, I
had laid my hands on an Ephippiger of the
other sex. I was offering the Sphex a male.
More far-seeing than I in this important ques-
tion of provender, the Wasp would have no-
thing to say to my game :

"A male, indeed! Is that a dinner for
my larvae? What do you take them for? "

What nice discrimination they have, these
dainty epicures, who are able to differentiate
between the tender flesh of the female and the
comparatively dry flesh of the males ! What
an unerring glance, which can distinguish at
once between the two sexes, so much alike in
shape and colour! The female carries a
sword at the tip of her abdomen, the oviposi-
tor wherewith the eggs are buried in the
ground; and that is about the only external
difference between her and the male. This
distinguishing feature never escapes the per-
spicacious Sphex; and that is why, in my ex-
periment, the Wasp rubbed her eyes, hugely
puzzled at beholding swordless a prey which
she well knew carried a sword when she
caught it. What must not have passed
1 66

The Wisdom of Instinct

through her httle Sphex brain at the sight of
this transformation?

Let us now watch the Wasp when, having
prepared the burrow, she goes back for her
victim, which, after its capture and the opera-
tion that paralysed it, she has left at no great
distance. The Ephippiger is in a condition
similar to that of the Cricket sacrificed by the
Yellow-winged Sphex, a condition proving
for certain that stings have been driven into
her thoracic ganglia. Nevertheless, a good
many movements still continue; but they are
disconnected, though endowed with a certain
vigour. Incapable of standing on its legs,
the insect lies on its side or on its back. It
flutters its long antennee and also its palpi ; it
opens and closes its mandibles and bites as
hard as in the normal state. The abdomen
heaves rapidly and deeply. The ovipositor
is brought back sharply under the belly,
against which it almost lies flat. The legs
stir, but languidly and irregularly; the middle
legs seem more torpid than the others. If
pricked with a needle, the whole body shud-
ders convulsively; efforts are made to get up
and walk, but without success. In short, the
insect would be full of life, but for its inability
to move about or even to stand upon its legs.
167

The Hunting Wasps

We have here therefore a wholly local para-
lysis, a paralysis of the legs, or rather a par-
tial abolition and ataxy of their movements.
Can this very incomplete inertia be caused by
some special arrangement of the victim's
nervous system, or does it come from this,
that the Wasp perhaps administers only a
single prick, instead of stinging each ganglion
of the thorax, as the Cricket-huntress does?
I cannot tell.

Still, for all its shivering, its convulsions,
its disconnected movements, the victim is
none the less incapable of hurting the larva
that is meant to devour it. I have taken
from the burrow of the Sphex Ephippigers
struggling just as lustily as when they were
first half-paralysed; and nevertheless the
feeble grub, hatched but a few hours since,
was digging Its teeth Into the gigantic victim
in all security; the dwarf was biting into the
colossus without danger to itself. This strik-
ing result Is due to the spot selected by the
mother for laying her egg. I have already
said how the Yellow-winged Sphex glues her
egg to the Cricket's breast, a little to one
side, between the first and second pair of
legs. Exactly the same place Is chosen by
the White-edged Sphex; and a similar place,
1 68

The Wisdom of Instinct

a little farther back, towards the root of one
of the large hind-thighs, is adopted by the
Languedocian Sphex, all three thus giving
proof, by this uniformity, of wonderful dis-
cernment in picking out the spot where the
egg is bound to be safe.

Consider the Ephippiger pent in the bur-
row. She lies stretched upon her back, abso-
lutely incapable of turning. In vain, she
struggles, in vain she writhes : the disordered
movements of her legs are lost in space, the
room being too wide to afford them the sup-
port of its walls. The grub cares nothing
for the victim's convulsions: it is at a spot
where naught can reach it, not tarsi, nor man-
dibles, nor ovipositor, nor antenna; a spot
absolutely stationary, devoid of so much as
a surface tremor. , It is in perfect safety, on
the sole condition that the Ephippiger cannot
shift her position, turn over, get upon her
feet; and this one condition is admirably ful-
filled.

But, with several heads of game, all in the
same stage of paralysis, the larva's danger
would be great. Though it would have no-
thing to fear from the insect first attacked,
because of its position out of the reach of its
victim, it would have every occasion to dread
169

The Hunting Wasps

the proximity of the others, which, stretching
their legs at random, might strike it and rip
It open with their spurs. This is perhaps the
reason why the Yellow-winged Sphex, who
heaps up three or four Crickets In the same
cell, practically annihilates all movement In
Its victims, whereas the Languedocian Sphex,
victualling each burrow with a single piece of
game, leaves her Ephlpplgers the best part of
their power of motion and contents herself
with making it Impossible for them to change
their position or stand upon their legs. She
may thus, though I cannot say so positively,
economize her dagger-thrusts.

While the only half-paralysed Ephipplger
cannot Imperil the larva, fixed on a part of
the body where resistance is impossible, the
case Is different with the Sphex, who has to
cart her prize home. First, having still, to a
great extent, preserved the use of Its tarsi, the
victim clutches with these at any blade of
grass encountered on the road along which It
Is being dragged; and this produces an obsta-
cle to the hauling-process which Is difficult to
overcome. The Sphex, already heavily bur-
dened by the weight of her load, is liable to
exhaust herself with her efforts to make the
other Insect relax Its desperate grip In grassy
170

The Wisdom of Instinct

places. But this is the least serious draw-
back. The Ephippiger preserves the com-
plete use of her mandibles, which snap and
bite with their customary vigour. Now what
these terrible nippers have in front of them is
just the slender body of the enemy, at a time
when she Is In her haullng-attltude. The an-
tennae, In fact, are grasped not far from their
roots, so that the mouth of the victim dragged
along on Its back faces either the thorax or
the abdomen of the Sphex, who, standing
high on her long legs, takes good care, I am
convinced, not to be caught in the mandibles
yawning underneath her. At all events, a
moment of forgetfulness, a slip, the merest
trifle can bring her within the reach of two
powerful nippers, which would not neglect the
opportunity of taking a pitiless vengeance.
In the more difficult cases at any rate, If not
always, the action of those formidable pincers
must be done away with; and the fish-hooks
of the legs must be rendered incapable of in-
creasing their resistance to the process of
transport.

How will the Sphex go to work to obtain
this result? Here man, even the man of sci-
ence, would hesitate, would waste his time in
barren efforts and would perhaps abandon all
171

The Hunting Wasps

hope of success. He can come and take one
lesson from the Sphex. She, without ever
being taught it, without ever seeing it prac-
tised by others, understands her surgery
through and through. She knows the most
dehcate mysteries of the physiology of the
nerves, or rather she behaves as if she did.
She knows that under her victim's skull there
is a circlet of nervous nuclei, something simi-
lar to the brain of the higher animals. She
knows that this main centre of innervation
controls the action of the mouth-parts and
moreover is the seat of the will, without
whose orders not a single muscle acts; lastly,
she knows that, by Injuring this sort of brain,
she will cause all resistance to cease, the insect
no longer possessing any will to resist. As
for the mode of operating, this is the easiest
matter in the world to her; and, when we
have been taught in her school, we are free
to try her process in our turn. The instru-
ment employed is no longer the sting: the in-
sect, in its wisdom, has deemed compression
preferable to a poisoned thrust. Let us ac-
cept its decision, for we shall see presently
how prudent it is to be convinced of our own
ignorance In the presence of the animal's
knowledge. Lest by editing my account I
172

The Wisdom of Instinct

should fail to give a true impression of the
subhme talent of this masterly operator, I
here copy out my note as I pencilled it on the
spot, immediately after the stirring specta-
cle.

The Sphex finds that her victim is offering
too much resistance, hooking itself here and
there to blades of grass. She then stops to
perform upon it the following curious opera-
tion, a sort of coup de grace. The Wasp,
still astride her prey, forces open the articula-
tion of the neck, high up, at the nape. Then
she seizes the neck with her mandibles and,
without making any external wound, probes
as far forward as possible under the skull, so
as to seize and chew up the ganglia of the
head. When this operation is done, the vic-
tim is utterly motionless, incapable of the
least resistance, whereas previously the legs,
though deprived of the power of connected
movement needed for walking, vigorously op-
posed the process of traction.

There is the fact in ,all its eloquence.
With the points of its mandibles, the insect,
while leaving uninjured the thin and supple
membrane of the neck, goes rummaging into
the skull and munching the brain. There is
no effusion of blood, no wound, but simply an
173

The Hunting Wasps

external pressure. Of course, I kept for my
own purposes the Ephippiger paralysed be-
fore my eyes, in order to ascertain the effects
of the operation at my leisure; also of course,
I hastened to repeat in my turn, upon live
Ephippigers, what the Sphex had just taught
me. I will here compare my results with the
Wasp's.

Two Ephippigers whose cervical ganglia I
squeeze and compress with a forceps fall rap-
idly into a state resembling that of the victims
of the Sphex. Only, they grate their cym-
bals if I tease them with a needle; and the
legs still retain a few disordered and languid
movements. The difference no doubt is due
to the fact that my patients were not previ-
ously injured in their thoracic ganglia, as were
those of the Sphex, who were first stung on
the breast. Allowing for this important con-
dition, we see that I was none too bad a pupil
and that I imitated pretty closely my teacher
of physiology, the Sphex. I confess, it was
not without a certain satisfaction that I suc-
ceeded in doing almost as well as the insect.

As well? What am I tall<^ing about?

Wait a bit and you shall see that I still have

much to learn from the Sphex. For what

happens is that my two patients very soon die :

174

The Wisdom of Instinct

I mean, they really die; and, in four or five
days, I have nothing but putrid corpses before
my eyes. And the Wasp's Ephippiger? I
need hardly say that the Wasp's Ephippiger,
even ten days after the operation, is perfectly
fresh, just as she will be required by the larva
for which she has been destined. Nay,
more: only a few hours after the operation
under the skull, there reappeared, as though
nothing had occurred, the disorderly move-
ments of the legs, antennas, palpi, ovipositor
and mandibles; in a word, the insect returned
to the condition wherein it was before the
Sphex bit its brain. And these movements
were kept up after, though they became
feebler every day. The Sphex had merely
reduced her victim to a passing state of tor-
por, lasting amply long enough to enable her
to bring it home without resistance; and I,
who thought myself her rival, was but a
clumsy and barbarous butcher: I killed my
prize. She, with her inimitable dexterity,
shrewdly compressed the brain to produce a
lethargy of a few hours; I, brutal through
ignorance, perhaps crushed under my forceps
that delicate organ, the main seat of life. If
anything could prevent me from blushing at
my defeat, it would be the conviction that
175

The Hunting Wasps

very few, if any, could vie with these clever
ones in cleverness.

Ah, I now understand why the Sphex does
not use her sting to injure the cervical gan-
glia ! A drop of poison injected here, at the
centre of vital force, would destroy the whole
nervous system ; and death would follow soon
after. But it is not death that the huntress
wishes to obtain; the larvae have not the least
use for dead game, for a corpse, in short,
smelling of corruption; and all that she wants
to bring about is a lethargy, a passing torpor,
which will put a stop to the victim's resistance
during the carting process, this resistance
being difficult to overcome and moreover dan-
gerous for the Sphex. The torpor is ob-
tained by a method known in laboratories of
experimental physiology: compression of the
brain. The Sphex acts like a Flourens,^ who,
laying bare an animal's brain and bearing
upon the cerebral mass, forthwith suppresses
intelligence, will, sensibility and movement.
The pressure is removed; and everything re-
appears. Even so do the remains of the
Ephippiger's life reappear, as the lethargic
effects of a skilfully-directed pressure pass off.

1 Cf. p. 45 n. Flourens' Experiences sur le syst^me
nerveux were first published in 1825. — Translator's
Note.

176

The Wisdom of Instinct

The gangha of the skull, squeezed between
the mandibles but without fatal contusions,
gradually recover their activity and put an
end to the general torpor. Admit that it is
all alarmingly scientific.

* *

Fortune has her entomological whims : you
run after her and catch no glimpse of her;
you forget about her and behold, she comes
tapping at your door! How vainly I
watched and waited, how many useless jour-
neys I made to see the Languedocian Sphex
sacrifice her Ephippigers! Twenty years
pass; these pages are in the printer's hands;
and, one day early this month, on the 8th of
August 1878, my son fimlle comes rushing
into my study :

"Quick!" he shouts. "Come quick:
there's a Sphex dragging her prey under the
plane-trees, outside the door of the yard! "

£mile knew all about the business, from
what I had told him, to amuse him when we
used to sit up late, and better still from simi-
lar incidents which he had witnessed in our
life out of doors. He is right. I run out and
177

The Hunting Wasps

see a magnificent Languedocian Sphex drag-
ging a paralysed Ephippiger by the antennae.
She is making for the hen-house close by and
seems anxious to scale the wall, with the ob-
ject of fixing her burrow under some tile on
the roof; for, a few years ago, in the same
place, I saw a Sphex of the same species ac-
complish the ascent with her game and make
her home under the arch of a badly-joined
tile. Perhaps the present Wasp is descended
from the one who performed that arduous
climb.

A like feat seems about to be repeated;
and this time before numerous witnesses, for
all the family, working under the shade of
the plane-trees, come and form a circle
around the Sphex. They wonder at the un-
ceremonious boldness of the insect, which is
not diverted from its work by a gallery of
onlookers; all are struck by its proud and
lusty bearing, as, with raised head and the
victim's antennae firmly gripped in its mandi-
bles, it drags the enormous burden after it.
I, alone among the spectators, feel a twinge
of regret at the sight :

" Ah, if only I had some live Ephip-
pigers! " I cannot help saying, with not the
least hope of seeing my wish realized.
178

The Wisdom of Instinct

"Live Ephippigers? " replies £mile.
" Why, I have some perfectly fresh ones,
caught this morning! "

He dashes upstairs, four steps at a time,
and runs to his little den, where a fence of
dictionaries encloses a park for the rearing
of some fine caterpillars of the Spurge Hawk-
moth. He brings me three Ephippigers, the
best that I could wish for, two females and a
male.

How did these insects come to be at hand,
at the moment when they were wanted, for
an experiment tried in vain twenty years ago?
That is another story. A Lesser Grey
Shrike had nested in one of the tall plane-
trees of the avenue. Now a few days earlier,
the mistral, the brutal north-west wind of our
parts, blew with such violence as to bend the
branches as well as the reeds; and the nest,
turned upside down by the swaying of its
support, had dropped its contents, four small
birds. Next morning, I found the brood
upon the ground ; three were killed by the fall,
the fourth was still alive. The survivor was
entrusted to the cares of Emile, who went
Cricket-hunting twice a day on the neighbour-
ing grass-plots for the benefit of his young
charge. But Crickets are small and the
179

The Hunting Wasps

nurseling's appetite called for many of them.
Another dish was preferred, the Ephippiger,
of whom a stock was collected from time to
time among the stalks and prickly leaves of
the eryngo. The three insects which Emile
brought me came from the Shrike's larder.
My pity for the fallen nestling had procured
me this unhoped-for success.

After making the circle of spectators stand
back so as to leave the field clear for the
Sphex, I take away her prey with a pair of
pincers and at once give her in exchange one
of my Ephippigers, carrying a sword at the
end of her belly, like the game which I have
abstracted. The dispossessed Wasp stamps
her feet two or three times; and that is the
only sign of impatience which she gives. She
goes for her new prey, which is too stout, too
obese even to try to avoid pursuit, grips it
with her mandibles by the saddle-shaped
corselet, gets astride and, curving her abdo-
men, slips the end of it under the Ephip-
piger's thorax. Here, no doubt, some stings
are administered, though I am unable to state
the number exactly, because of the difficulty of
observation. The Ephippiger, a peaceable
victim, suffers herself to be operated on with-
out resistance; she is like the silly Sheep of
180

The Wisdom of Instinct

our slaughter-houses. The Sphex takes her
time and wields her lancet with a deliberation
which favours accuracy of aim. So far, the
observer has nothing to complain of; but the
prey touches the ground with its breast and
belly and exactly what happens underneath
escapes his eye. As for interfering and lift-
ing the Ephippiger a little, so as to see better,
that must not be thought of: the murderess
would resheathe her weapon and retire. The
act that follows is easy to observe. After
stabbing the thorax, the tip of the abdomen
appears under the victim's neck, which the
operator forces open by pressing the nape.
At this point, the sting probes with marked
persistency, as if the prick administered here
were more effective than elsewhere. One
would be inclined to think that the nerve-cen-
tre attacked is the lower part of the oeso-
phageal chain; but the continuance of move-
ment in the mouth-parts — the mandibles,
jaws and palpi — controlled by this seat of
innervation shows that such is not the case.
Through the neck, the Sphex reaches simply
the ganglia of the thorax, or at any rate the
first of them, which is more easily accessible
through the thin skin of the neck than through
the integuments of the chest.
i8i

The Hunting Wasps

And In a moment it is all over. Without
the least shiver denoting pain, the Ephippiger
becomes henceforth an inert mass. I remove
the Sphex' patient for the second time and
replace it by the other female at my disposal.
The same proceedings are repeated, followed
by the same result. The Sphex has per-
formed her skilful surgery thrice over, almost
in immediate succession, first with her own
prey and then with my substitutes. Will she
do so a fourth time with the male Ephippiger
whom I still have left? I have my doubts,
not because the Wasp is tired, but because the
game does not suit her. I have never seen
her with any prey but females, who, crammed
with eggs, are the food which the larvae ap-
preciate above all others. My suspicion is
well-founded; deprived of her capture, the
Sphex stubbornly refuses the male whom I
offer to her. She runs hither and thither,
with hurried steps, in search of the vanished
game; three or four times, she goes up to the
Ephippiger, walks round him, casts a scorn-
ful glance at him; and at last she flies away.
He is not what her larvas want; experiment
demonstrates this once again after an interval
of twenty years.

The three females stabbed, two of them
182

The Wisdom of Instinct

before my eyes, remain in my possession. In
each case, all the legs are completely para-
lysed. Whether lying naturally, on its belly
or on its back or side, the insect retains in-
definitely whatever position we give it. A
continued fluttering of the antennas, a few
intermittent pulsations of the belly and the
play of the mouth-parts are the only signs of
life. Movement is destroyed but not suscep-
tibility; for, at the least prick administered
to a thin-skinned spot, the whole body gives
a slight shudder. Perhaps, some day, physi-
ology will find in such victims the material
for valuable work on the functions of the
nervous system. The Wasp's sting, so in-
comparably skilful at striking a particular
point and administering a wound which af-
fects that point alone, will supplement, with
immense advantage, the experimenter's brutal
scalpel, which rips open where it ought to
give merely a hght touch. Meanwhile, here
are the results which I have obtained from
the three victims, but In another direction.

As only the movement of the legs has been
destroyed, without any wound save that of
the nerve-centres, which are the seat of that
movement, the Insect must die of inanition
and not of its injuries. The experiment was
183

The Hunting Wasps

conducted as follows : two sound and healthy
Ephlppigers, just as I picked them up in the
fields, were imprisoned without food, one in
the dark, the other in the light. The second
died in four days, the first in five. This dif-
ference of a day is easily explained. In the
light, the insect made greater exertions to re-
cover its liberty; and, as every movement of
the animal machine is accompanied by a cor-
responding expenditure of energy, a greater
sum total of activity has involved a more
rapid consumption of the reserve force of the
organism. In the light, there is more rest-
lessness and a shorter life; in the dark, less
restlessness and a longer life, while no food
at all was taken in either case.

One of my three stabbed Ephippigers was
kept in the dark, fasting. In her case, there
were not only the conditions of complete ab-
stinence and darkness, but also the serious
wounds inflicted by the Sphex; and neverthe-
less for seventeen days I saw her continually
waving her antenna?. As long as this sort
of pendulum keeps on swinging, the clock of
life does not stop. On the eighteenth day,
the creature ceased its antennary movements
and died. The badly-wounded insect there-
fore lived, under the same conditions, four
184

The Wisdom of Instinct

times as long as the insect that was untouched.
What seemed as though it should be a cause
of death was really a cause of life.

However paradoxical it may seem at first
sight, this result is exceedingly simple. When
untouched, the insect exerts itself and conse-
quently uses up its reserves. When para-
lysed, it has merely the feeble, internal move-
ments which are inseparable from any
organism; and its substance is economized in
proportion to the weakness of the action dis-
played. In the first case, the animal machine
is at work and wears itself out; in the second,
it is at rest and saves itself. There being no
nourishment now to repair the waste, the
moving insect spends its nutritive reserves in
four days and dies; the motionless insect does
not spend them and lives for eighteen days.
Life is a continual dissolution, the physiolo-
gists tell us; and the Sphex' victims give us
the neatest possible demonstration of the fact.

One remark more. Fresh food is abso-
lutely necessary for the Wasp's larvae. If
the prey were warehoused in the burrow in-
tact, in four or five days it would be a corpse
abandoned to corruption; and the scarce-
hatched grub would find nothing to live upon
but a putrid mass. Pricked with the sting,
185

The Hunting Wasps

however, it can keep alive for two or three
weeks, a period more than long enough to
allow the egg to hatch and the larva to grow.
The paralysing of the victim therefore has
a twofold result: first, the living dish remains
motionless and the safety of the delicate grub
is not endangered; secondly, the meat keeps
good a long time and thus ensures wholesome
food for the larva. Man's logic, enlight-
ened by science, could discover nothing better.

My two other Ephippigers stung by the
Sphex were kept in the dark with food. To
feed inert insects, hardly differing from
corpses except by the perpetual waving of
their long antennae, seems at first an impossi-
bility; still, the play of the mouth-parts gave
me some hope and I tried. My success ex-
ceeded my anticipations. There was no
question here, of course, of giving them a
lettuce-leaf or any other piece of green stuff
on which they might have browsed in their
normal state; they were feeble valetudina-
rians, who needed spoon-feeding, so to speak,
and supporting with liquid nourishment. I
used sugar-and-water.

Laying the insect on its back, I place a drop
of the sugary fluid on its mouth with a straw.
The palpi at once begin to stir; the mandi-
i86

The Wisdom of Instinct

bles and jaws move. The drop Is swallowed
with evident satisfaction, especially after a
somewhat prolonged fast. I repeat the dose
until it is refused. The meal takes place
once a day, sometimes twice, at irregular In-
tervals, lest I should become too much of a
slave to my patients. Well, one of the
Ephipplgers lived for twenty-one days on this
meagre fare. It was not much, compared
with the eighteen days of the one whom I had
left to die of starvation. True, the Insect
had twice had a bad fall, having dropped
from the experimentlng-table to the floor ow-
ing to some piece of awkwardness on my
part. The bruises which it received must
have hastened its end. The other, which suf-
fered no accidents, lived for forty days. As
the nourishment employed, sugar-and-water,
could not indefinitely take the place of the
natural green food, it Is very likely that the
insect would have lived longer still if the usual
diet had been possible. And so the point
which I had In view Is proved: the victims
stung by the Digger-wasps die of starvation
and not of their wounds.

187

CHAPTER X

THE IGNORANCE OF INSTINCT

THE Sphex has shown us how infaUibly
and with what transcendental art she
acts when guided by the unconscious inspira-
tion of her instinct; she is now going to show
us how poor she is in resource, how limited
in intelligence, how illogical even, in circum-
stances outside of her regular routine. By
a strange inconsistency, characteristic of the
instinctive faculties, profound wisdom is
accompanied by an ignorance no less pro-
found. To instinct nothing is impossible,
however great the difficulty may be. In
building her hexagonal cells, with their floors
consisting of three lozenges, the Bee solves
with absolute precision the arduous problem
of how to achieve the maximum result at a
minimum cost, a problem whose solution by
man would demand a powerful mathematical
mind. The Wasps whose larvae live on prey
display in their murderous art methods hardly
rivalled by those of a man versed in the in-
tricacies of anatomy and physiology. No-
i88

The Ignorance of Instinct

thing is difficult to instinct, so long as the act
is not outside the unvarying cycle of animal
existence; on the other hand, nothing is easy
to instinct, if the act is at all removed from
the course usually pursued. The insect which
astounds us, which terrifies us with its ex-
traordinary intelligence surprises us, the next
moment, with its stupidity, when confronted
with some simple fact that happens to lie out-
side its ordinary practice. The Sphex will
supply us with a few instances.

Let us follow her dragging her Ephippiger
home. If fortune smile upon us, we may
witness some such little scene as that which I
will now describe. When entering her shel-
ter under the rock, where she has made her
burrow, the Sphex finds, perched on a blade
of grass, a Praying Mantis, a carnivorous
insect which hides cannibal habits under a
pious appearance. The danger threatened
by this robber ambushed on her path must be
known to the Sphex, for she lets go her game
and pluckily rushes upon the Mantis, to in-
flict some heavy blows and dislodge her, or
at all events to frighten her and inspire her
with respect. The robber does not move,
but closes her lethal machinery, the two ter-
rible saws of the arm and fore-arm. The
189

The Hunting Wasps

Sphex goes back to her capture, harnesses
herself to the antennae and boldly passes un-
der the blade of grass whereon the other sits
perched. By the direction of her head we
can see that she is on her guard and that she
holds the enemy rooted, motionless, under
the menace of her eyes. Her courage meets
with the reward which it deserves: the prey
is stored away without further mishap.

A word more on the Praying Mantis, or,
as they say in Provence, lou Prego Dieou, the
Pray-to-God. Her long, pale-green wings,
like spreading veils, her head raised heaven-
wards, her folded arms, crossed upon her
breast, are in fact a sort of travesty of a nun
in ecstasy. And yet she is a ferocious crea-
ture, loving carnage. Though not her fa-
vourite spots, the work-yards of the various
Digger-wasps receive her visits pretty fre-
quently. Posted near the burrows, on some
bramble or other, she waits for chance to
bring within her reach some of the arrivals,
forming a double capture for her, as she
seizes both the huntress and her prey. Her
patience is long put to the test: the Wasp
suspects something and is on her guard; still,
from time to time, a rash one gets caught.
With a sudden rustle of wings half-unfurled
190

The Ignorance of Instinct

as by the violent release of a clutch, the
Mantis terrifies the newcomer, who hesitates
for a moment, in her fright. Then, with the
sharpness of a spring, the toothed fore-arm
folds back on the toothed upper arm; and the
insect is caught between the blades of the
double saw. It is as though the jaws of a
Wolf-trap were closing on the animal that had
nibbled at its bait. Thereupon, without un-
loosing the cruel machine, the Mantis gnaws
her victim by small mouthfuls. Such are the
ecstasies, the prayers, the mystic meditations
of the Prego Dieou.

Of the scenes of carnage which the Pray-
ing Mantis has left in my memory, let me
relate one. The thing happens in front of
a work-yard of Bee-eating Philanthl. These
diggers feed their larvae on Hive-bees, whom
they catch on the flowers v/hile gathering pol-
len and honey. If the Philanthus who has
made a capture feels that her Bee is swollen
with honey, she never fails, before storing
her, to squeeze her crop, either on the way
or at the entrance of the dwelling, so as to
make her disgorge the delicious syrup, which
she drinks by licking the tongue which her
unfortunate victim, in her death-agony, sticks
out of her mouth at full length. This pro-
igi

The Hunting Wasps

fanatlon of a dying creature, whose enemy
squeezes its belly to empty it and feast on
the contents, has something so hideous about
it that I should denounce the Philanthus as
a brutal murderess, if animals were capable
of wrongdoing. At the moment of some
such horrible banquet, I have seen the Wasp,
with her prey, seized by the Mantis: the
bandit was rifled by another bandit. And
here is an awful detail: while the Mantis held
her transfixed under the points of the double
saw and was already munching her belly, the
Wasp continued to lick the honey of her Bee,
unable to relinquish the delicious food even
amid the terrors of death. Let us hasten to
cast a veil over these horrors.

We will return to the Sphex, with whose
burrow we must make ourselves acquainted
before we go further. This burrow is a hole
made in fine sand, or rather in a sort of dust
at the bottom of a natural shelter. Its en-
trance-passage is very short, merely an inch
or two, without a bend, and leads to a single,
roomy, oval chamber. The whole thing is a
rough den, hastily dug out, rather than a
leisurely and artistically excavated dwelling.
I have explained that the reason for this sim-
plicity is that the game is captured first and
192

The Ignorance of Instinct

set down for a moment on the hunting-field
while the Wasp hurriedly makes a burrow in
the vicinity, a method of procedure which
allows of but one chamber or cell to each re-
treat. For who can tell whither the chances
of the day will lead the huntress for her sec-
ond capture? The prisoner is heavy and the
burrow must therefore be near; so to-day's
home, which is too far away for the next
Ephippiger to be conveyed to it, cannot be
utilized to-morrow. Thus, as each prey is
caught, there is a fresh excavation, a fresh
burrow, with its single chamber, now here,
now there. Having said this, we will try a
few experiments to see how the insect behaves
when we create circumstances new to it.

Experiment I

A Sphex, dragging her prey along. Is a few
inches from the burrow. Without disturb-
ing her, I cut with a pair of scissors the
Ephippiger's antennse, which the Wasp, as
we know, uses for harness-ropes. On recov-
ering from the surprise caused by the sudden
lightening of her load, the Sphex goes back
to her victim and, without hesitation, now
seizes the root of the antenna, the short
193

The Hunting Wasps

stump left by the scissors. It is very short
indeed, hardly a millimetre;^ no matter: it
is enough for the Sphex, who grips this fag-
end of a rope and resumes her hauling. With
the greatest precaution, so as not to injure
the Wasp, I now cut the two antennary
stumps level with the skull. Finding nothing
left to catch hold of at the familiar points,
the Insect seizes, close by, one of the victim's
long palpi and continues Its haullng-work,
without appearing at all perturbed by this
change In the harness. I leave It alone.
The prey Is brought home and placed so that
Its head faces the entrance to the burrow;
and the Wasp goes In by herself, to make a
brief Inspection of the Inside of the cell be-
fore proceeding to warehouse the provisions.
Her behaviour reminds us of that of the Yel-
low-winged Sphex In similar circumstances.
I take advantage of this short moment to
seize the abandoned prey, remove all Its palpi
and place It a little farther off, about half a
yard from the burrow. The Sphex reap-
pears and goes straight to her captive, whom
she has seen from her threshold. She looks
at the top of the head, she looks underneath,
on either side and finds nothing to take hold

1.039 inch. — Translator's Note.
194

The Ignorance of Instinct

of. A desperate attempt Is made : the Wasp,
opening wide her mandibles, tries to grab the
Ephippiger by the head; but the pincers have
not a sufficient compass to take in so large a
bulk and they slip off the round, polished
skull. She makes several fresh endeavours,
each time without result. She is at length
convinced of the uselessness of her efforts.
She draws back a little to one side and ap-
pears to be renouncing further attempts.
One would say that she was discouraged; at
least, she smoothes her wings with her hind-
legs, while with her front tarsi, which she
first puts Into her mouth, she washes her eyes.
This, so it has always seemed to me, Is a sign
in Hymenoptera of giving up a job.

Nevertheless there Is no lack of parts by
which the Ephippiger might be seized and
dragged along as easily as by the antennae
and the palpi. There are the six legs, there
Is the ovipositor: all organs slender enough
to be gripped boldly and to serve as haullng-
ropes. I agree that the easiest way to effect
the storing is to introduce the prey head first,
drawn down by the antennae ; but It would
enter almost as readily if drawn by a leg,
especially one of the front legs, for the orifice
Is wide and the passage short or sometimes
195

The Hunting Wasps

even non-existent. Then how is it that the
Sphex did not once try to seize one of the six
tarsi or the tip of the ovipositor, whereas she
attempted the impossible, the absurd, in striv-
ing to grip, with her much too short mandi-
bles, the huge skull of her prey? Can it be
that the idea did not occur to her? Then we
will try to suggest it.

I offer her, right under her mandibles, first
a leg, next the end of the abdominal rapier.
The insect obstinately refuses to bite; my re-
peated blandishments lead to nothing. A
singular huntress, to be embarrassed by her
game, not knowing how to seize it by a leg
when she is not able to take it by the horns!
Perhaps my prolonged presence and the un-
usual events that have just occurred have dis-
turbed her faculties. Then let us leave the
Sphex to herself, between her Ephippiger and
her burrow; let us give her time to collect her-
self and, in the calm of solitude, to think
out some way of managing her business. I
leave her therefore and continue my walk;
and, two hours later, I return to the same
place. The Sphex is gone, the burrow is still
open and the Ephippiger is lying just where
I placed her. Conclusion: the Wasp has
tried nothing; she went away, abandoning
196

The Ignorance of Instinct

everything, her home and her game, when, to
utilize them both, all that she had to do was
to take her prey by one leg. And so this
rival of Flourens, who but now was startling
us with her cleverness as she dexterously
squeezed her victim's brain to produce
lethargy, becomes incredibly helpless in the
simplest case outside her usual habits. She,
who so well knows how to attack a victim's
thoracic ganglia with her sting and its cervi-
cal ganglia with her mandibles; she, who
makes such a judicious difference between a
poisoned prick annihilating the vital influence
of the nerves for ever and a pressure causing
only momentary torpor, cannot grip her prey
by this part when it is made impossible for
her to grip it by any other. To understand
that she can take a leg instead of an antenna
is utterly beyond her powers. She must have
the antenna, or some other string attached to
the head, such as one of the palpi. If these
cords did not exist, her race would perish,
for lack of the capacity to solve this trivial
problem.

Experiment II

The Wasp is engaged in closing her bur-
row, where the prey has been stored and the
197

The Hunting Wasps

egg laid upon it. With her front tarsi, she
brushes her doorstep, working backwards
and sweeping into the entrance a stream of
dust which passes under her belly and spurts
behind in a parabolic spray as continuous as a
liquid spray, so nimble is the sweeper in her
actions. From time to time, the Sphex picks
out with her mandibles a few grains of sand,
so many solid blocks which she inserts one
by one into the mass of dust, causing it all
to cake together by beating and compressing
it with her forehead and mandibles. Walled
up by this masonry, the entrance-door soon
disappears from sight.

I intervene in the miiddle of the work.
Pushing the Sphex aside, I carefully clear the
short gallery with the blade of a knife, take
away the materials that close it and restore
full communication between the cell and the
outside. Then, with my forceps, without
damaging the edifice, I take the Ephippiger
from the cell, where she lies with her head at
the back and her ovipositor towards the en-
trance. The Wasp's egg is on the victim's
breast, at the usual place, the root of one of
the hinder thighs : a proof that the Sphex was
giving the finishing touch to the burrow, with
the intention of never returning.
198

The Ignorance of Instinct

Having done this and put the stolen prey
safely away in a box, I yield my place to the
Sphex, who has been on the watch beside me
while I was rifling her home. Finding the
door open, she goes in and stays for a few
moments. Then she comes out and resumes
her work where I interrupted it, that is to
say, she starts conscientiously stopping the
entrance to the cell by sweeping dust back-
wards and carrying grains of sand, which she
continues to heap up with scrupulous care, as
though she were doing useful work. When
the door is once again thoroughly walled up,
the insect brushes itself, seems to give a
glance of satisfaction at the task accomplished
and finally flies away.

The Sphex must have known that the bur-
row contained nothing, because she went in-
side and even stayed there for some time;
and yet, after this inspection of the pillaged
abode, she once more proceeds to close up
the cell with the same care as though nothing
out of the way had happened. Can she be
proposing to use this burrow later, to return
to it with a fresh victim and lay a new egg
there? If so, her work of closing would be
intended to prevent the access of intruders to
the dwelling during her absence; it would be
199

The Hunting Wasps

a measure of prudence against the attempts of
other diggers who might covet the ready-
made chamber; it might also be a wise pre-
caution against internal dilapidations. And,
as a matter of fact, some Hunting Wasps do
take care to protect the entrance to the bur-
row by closing it temporarily, when the work
has to be suspended for a time. Thus I
have seen certain Ammophilas, whose burrow
is a perpendicular shaft, block the entrance
to the home with a small flat stone when the
insect goes off hunting or ceases its mining-
operations at sunset, the hour for striking
work. But this is a slight affair, a mere
slab laid over the mouth of the shaft. When
the insect comes, it only takes a moment to
remove the little flat stone; and the entrance
is free.

On the other hand, the obstruction which
we have just seen built by the Sphex is a solid
barrier, a stout piece of masonry, where dust
and gravel form alternate layers all the way
down the passage. It is a definite perform-
ance and not a provisional defence, as is
proved by the care with which it is con-
structed. Besides, as I think I have shown
pretty clearly, it is very doubtful, considering
the way in which she acts, whether the Sphex
200

The Ignorance of Instinct

will ever return to make use of the home
which she has prepared. The next Ephip-
piger will be caught elsewhere; and the ware-
house destined to receive her will be dug
elsewhere too. But these, after all, are
only arguments: let us rather have recourse
to experiment, which is more conclusive here
than logic.

I allowed nearly a week to elapse, in order
to give the Sphex time to return to the bur-
row which she had so methodically closed
and to make use of it for her next laying if
such were her intention. Events corre-
sponded with the logical inferences: the bur-
row was in the condition wherein I left it,
still firmly closed, but without provisions,
egg or larva. The proof was decisive : the
Wasp had not been back.

So the plundered Sphex enters her house,
makes a leisurely inspection of the empty
chamber and, a moment afterwards, behaves
as though she had not perceived the disap-
pearance of the bulky prey which but now
filled the cell. Did she, in fact, fail to no-
tice the absence of the provisions and the
egg? Is she, who is so clear-sighted in her
murderous proceedings, dense enough not to
realize that the cell is empty? I dare not
20 1

The Haunting Wasps

accuse her of such stupidity. She is aware
of it. But then why that other piece of stu-
pidity which makes her close — and very
conscientiously close — an empty burrow,
one which she does not purpose to victual
later? Here the work of closing is useless,
is supremely absurd; no matter: the insect
performs it with the same ardour as though
the larva's future depended on it. The in-
sect's various instinctive actions are then
fatally linked together. Because one thing
has been done, a second thing must inevitably
be done to complete the first or to prepare
the way for its completion; and the two acts
depend so closely upon each other that the
performing of the first entails that of the
second, even when, owing to casual circum-
stances, the second has become not only inop-
portune but sometimes actually opposed to
the insect's interests. What object can the
Sphex have in blocking up a burrow which
has become useless, now that it no longer
contains the victim and the egg, and which
will always remain useless, since the insect
will not return to it? The only way to ex-
plain this inconsequent action is to look upon
it as the inevitable complement of the actions
that went before. In the normal order of
202

The Ignorance of Instinct

things, the Sphex hunts down her prey, lays
an egg and closes her burrow. The hunting
has been done; the game, it is true, has been
withdrawn by me from the cell; never mind:
the hunting has been done, the egg has been
laid; and now comes the business of closing
up the home. This is what the insect does,
without another thought, without in the least
suspecting the futility of her present labours.

Experiment III

To know everything and to know nothing,
according as it acts under normal or excep-
tional conditions : that is the strange anti-
thesis presented by the insect race. Other
examples, also drawn from the Sphex tribe,
will confirm this conclusion. The White-
edged Sphex (5. alhisecta) attacks medium-
sized Locusts, whereof the different species
to be found in the neighbourhood of the
burrow all furnish her with their tribute
of victims. Because of the abundance of
these Acridians, there is no need to go hunting
far afield. When the burrow, which takes
the form of a perpendicular shaft, is ready,
the Sphex merely explores the purlieus of
her lair, within a small radius, and is not long

2(Xl

The Hunting Wasps

in finding some Locust browsing in the sun-
shine. To pounce upon her and sting her,
despite her kicking, is to the Sphex the mat-
ter of a moment. After some fluttering of
its wings, which unfurl their carmine or azure
fan, after some drowsy stretching of its legs,
the victim ceases to move. It has now to be
brought home, on foot. For this laborious
operation, the Sphex employs the same
method as her kinswomen, that is to say, she
drags her prize along between her legs, hold-
ing one of its antennae in her mandibles. If
she encounters some grassy jungle, she goes
hopping and flitting from blade to blade,
without ever letting slip her prey. When at
last she comes within a few feet of her dwell-
ing, she performs a manoeuvre which is also
practised by the Languedocian Sphex; but she
does not attach as much importance to it, for
she frequently neglects it. Leaving her cap-
tive on the road, the Wasp hurries home,
though no apparent danger threatens her
abode, and puts her head through the en-
trance several times, even going part of the
way down the burrow. She next returns to
the Locust and, after bringing her nearer the
goal, leaves her a second time to revisit the
burrow. This performance is repeated over
204

The Ignorance of Instinct

and over again, always with the same anxious
haste.

These visits are sometimes followed by
grievous accidents. The victim, rashly aban-
doned on hilly ground, rolls to the bottom
of the slope; and the Sphex on her re-
turn, no longer finding it where she left it,
is obliged to seek for it, sometimes fruit-
lessly. If she find it, she must renew a toil-
some climb, which does not prevent her from
once more abandoning her booty on the
same unlucky declivity. Of these repeated
visits to the mouth of the shaft, the first can
be very logically explained. The Wasp, be-
fore arriving with her heavy burden, enquires
whether the entrance to the home be really
clear, whether nothing will hinder her from
bringing in her game. But, once this first
reconnaissance is made, what can be the use
of the rest, following one after the other, at
close intervals? Is the Sphex so volatile in
her ideas that she forgets the visit which she
has just paid and runs afresh to the burrow
a moment later, only to forget this new in-
spection also and to start doing the same
thing over and over again? That would be
a memory with very fleeting recollections,
whence the impression vanished almost as
205

The Hunting Wasps

soon as it was produced. Let us not linger
too long on this obscure point.

At last the game is brought to the brink of
the shaft, with its antennae hanging down the
hole. We now again see, faithfully imitated,
the method employed in the like case by the
Yellow-winged Sphex and also, but under
less striking conditions, by the Languedocian
Sphex. The Wasp enters alone, inspects the
interior, reappears at the entrance, lays hold
of the antennae and drags the Locust down.
While the Locust-huntress was making her
examination of the home, I have pushed her
prize a little farther back; and I obtained
results similar in all respects to those which
the Cricket-huntress gave me. Each Sphex
displays the same obstinacy in diving down
her burrow before dragging in the prey. Let
us recall here that the Yellow-winged Sphex
does not always allow herself to be caught
by this trick of pulling away her Cricket.
There are picked tribes, strong-minded fam-
ihes which, after a few disappointments, see
through the experimenter's wiles and know
how to baffle them. But these revolution-
aries, fit subjects for progress, are the mi-
nority; the remainder, mulish conservatives
clinging to the old manners and customs, are
206

The Ignorance of Instinct

the majority, the crowd. I am unable to
say whether the Locust-huntress also varies
in ingenuity according to the district which
she hails from.

But here is something more remarkable;
and it is this with which I wanted to conclude
the present experiment. After repeatedly
withdrawing the White-edged Sphex' prize
from the mouth of the pit and compelling her
to come and fetch it again, I take advantage
of her descent to the bottom of the shaft to
seize the prey and put it in a place of safety
where she cannot find it. The Sphex comes
up, looks about for a long time and, when she
is convinced that the prey is really lost, goes
down into her home again. A few moments
after, she reappears. Is it with the inten-
tion of resuming the chase? Not the least
in the world : the Sphex begins to stop up the
burrow. And what we see is not a tempo-
rary closing, effected with a small flat stone,
a slab covering the mouth of the well; it is a
final closing, carefully done with dust and
gravel swept into the passage until it is filled
up. The White-edged Sphex makes only
one cell at the bottom of her shaft and puts
one head of game into this cell. That single
Locust has been caught and dragged to the
207

The Hunting Wasps

edge of the hole. If she was not stored
away, it was not the huntress' fault, but
mine. The Wasp performed her task ac-
cording to the inflexible rule; and, also ac-
cording to the inflexible rule, she completes
her work by stopping up the dwelling, empty
though it be. We have here an exact repeti-
tion of the useless exertions made by the
Languedocian Sphex whose home has just
been plundered.

Experiment IF

It is almost impossible to make certam
whether the Yellow-winged Sphex, who con-
structs several cells at the end of the same
passage and stacks several Crickets m each,
is equally illogical when accidentally dis-
turbed in her proceedings. A cell can be
closed though empty or imperfectly victualled
and the Wasp will none the less continue to
come to the same burrow in order to work at
the others. Nevertheless, I have reason to
believe that this Sphex is subject to the same
aberrations as her two kinswomen. My con-
viction is based on the following facts: the
number of Crickets found in the cells, when
all the work is done, is usually four to each
208

The Ignorance of Instinct

cell, although it is not uncommon to find
only three, or even two. Four appears to
me to be the normal number, first, because
it is the most frequent and, secondly, because,
when rearing young larvje dug up while they
were still engaged on their first joint, I found
that all of them, those actually provided with
only two or three pieces of game as well as
those which had four, easily managed the
various Crickets wherewith I served them
one by one, up to and including the fourth,
but that after this they refused all nourish-
ment, or barely touched the fifth ration. If
four Crickets are necessary to the larva to
acquire the full development called for by Its
organization, why are sometimes only three,
sometimes only two provided for it? Why
this enormous difference in the quantity of
the victuals, some larvae having twice as much
as the others? It cannot be because of any
difference in the size of the dishes provided
to satisfy the grub's appetite, for all have
very much the same dimensions; and it can
therefore be due only to the wastage of game
on the way. We find. In fact, at the foot of
the banks whose upper stages are occupied
by the Sphex-wasps, Crickets that have been
paralysed but lost, owing to the slope of the
209

The Hunting Wasps

ground, down which they have slipped when
the huntresses have momentarily left them,
for some reason or other. These Crickets
fall a prey to the Ants and FHes; and the
Sphex-wasps who come across theni take
good care not to pick them up, for, if they
did, they would themselves be admitting ene-
mies into the house.

These facts seem to me to prove that,
while the Yellow-winged Sphex arithmetical
powers enable her to calculate exactly how
many victims to capture, she cannot achieve
a census of those which have safely reached
their destination. It is as though the insect
had no mathematical guide beyond an irre-
sistible impulse that prompts her to hunt for
game a definite number of times. When the
Sphex has made the requisite number of jour-
neys, when she has done her utmost to store
the captures that result from these, her work
is ended; and she closes the cell whether com-
pletely or incompletely provisioned. Na-
ture has endowed her with only those facul-
ties called for in ordinary circumstances by
the interests of her larvae; and, as these bhnd
faculties, which cannot be modified by ex-
perience, are sufficient for the preservation

2IO

The Ignorance of Instinct

of the race, the Insect is unable to go beyond
them.

I conclude therefore as I began: instinct
knows everything, in the undevlating paths
marked out for it; it knows nothing, outside
those paths. The sublime inspirations of
science and the astounding inconsistencies of
stupidity are both its portion, according as
the Insect acts under normal or accidental
conditions.

211

CHAPTER XI

AN ASCENT OF MONT VENTOUX

THANKS to its isolated position, which
leaves it freely exposed on every side
to atmospheric influence; thanks also to its
height, which makes it the topmost point of
France within the frontiers of either the Alps
or Pyrenees, our bare Provencal mountain,
Mont Ventoux, lends itself remarkably well
to the study of the climatic distribution of
plants. At its base the tender olive thrives,
with all that multitude of semiligneous plants,
such as the thyme, whose aromatic fragrance
calls for the sun of the Mediterranean re-
gions; on the summit, mantled with snov/ for
at least half the year, the ground is covered
with a northern flora, borrowed to some ex-
tent from arctic shores. Half a day's jour-
ney in an upward direction brings before our
eyes a succession of the chief vegetable types
which we should find in the course of a long
voyage from south to north along the same
meridian. At the start, your feet tread the
scented tufts of the thyme that forms a con-

212

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

tinuous carpet on the lower slopes; in a few
hours, they will be treading the dark hassocks
of the opposite-leaved saxifrage, the first
plant to greet the botanist who lands on the
coast of Spitzbergen in July. Below, in the
hedges, you have picked the scarlet flowers
of the pomegranate, a lover of African skies;
above you will pick a shaggy little poppy,
which shelters its stalks under a coverlet of
tiny fragments of stone and unfolds its
spreading yellow corolla as readily in the icy
solitudes of Greenland and the North Cape
as on the upper slopes of the Ventoux.

These contrasts have always something
fresh and stimulating about them; and, after
twenty-five ascents, they still retain their in-
terest for me. I made my twenty-third in
August 1865. There were eight of us:
three whose chief object was to botanize and
five attracted by a mountain expedition and
the panorama of the heights. Not one of
our five companions who were not interested
in the study of plants has since expressed a
desire to accompany me a second time. The
fact is that the climb is a hard and tiring one;
and the sight of a sunrise does not make up
for the fatigue endured.

One might best compare the Ventoux with
213

The Hunting Wasps

a heap of stones broken up for road-mending
purposes. Raise this heap suddenly to a
height of a mile and a quarter, increase its
base in proportion, cover the white of the
limestone with the black patch of the forests
and you have a clear idea of the general as-
pect of the mountain. This accumulation of
rubbish — sometimes small chips, sometimes
huge blocks — rises from the plain without
preliminary slopes or successive terraces
that would render the ascent less arduous by
dividing it into stages. The climb begins at
once by rocky paths, the best of which is
worse than the surface of a road newly
strewn with stones, and continues, becoming
ever rougher and rougher, right to the sum-
mit, the height of which is 6,270 feet.
Greenswards, babbling brooks, the spacious
shade of venerable trees, all the things, in
short, that lend such charm to other mount-
ains are here unknown and are replaced by
an interminable bed of limestone broken into
scales, which slip under our feet with a sharp,
almost metallic "click." By way of cas-
cades the Ventoux has rills of stones; the
rattle of falling rocks takes the place of the
whispering waters.

We are at Bedoin, at the foot of the
214

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

mountain. The arrangements with the
guide have been made, the hour of the start
fixed; the provisions are being talked over
and got ready. Let us try to rest, for we
shall have to spend a sleepless night on the
mountain to-morrow. But sleeping is just
the difficulty; I have never managed it and
that is where the chief cause of fatigue
lies. I would therefore advise those of my
readers who think of making a botanizing
ascent of the Ventoux not to arrive at Be-
doin on a Sunday evening. They will thus
avoid the noisy bustle of an inn with a cafe
attached to it, those endless loud-voiced con-
versations, those echoing cannons of the bil-
liard-balls, the ringing of glasses, the drink-
ing-songs, the ditties of nocturnal wayfarers,
the bellowing of the brass band at the ball
hard by and the other tribulations inse-
parable from this blessed day of idleness and
jollification. Will they obtain a better rest
on a week-day? I hope so, but I do not
guarantee it. For my part, I did not close
an eye. All night long, the rusty spit, work-
ing to provide us with food, creaked and
groaned under my bedroom. A thin board
was all that separated me from that machine
of the devil.

215

The Hunting Wasps

But already the sky Is growing light. A
donkey brays beneath the windows. It is
time to get up. We might as well not have
gone to bed. Foodstuffs and baggage are
strapped on; and, with a " Ja! Hi!" from
the guide, we are off. It Is four o'clock in
the morning. At the head of the caravan
walks Triboulet, with his Mule and his Ass:
Triboulet, the Nestor of the Ventoux guides.
My botanical colleagues inspect the vegeta-
tion on either side of the road by the cold
light of the dawn; the others talk. I follow
the party with a barometer slung from my
shoulder and a note-book and pencil In my
hand.

My barometer. Intended for taking the
altitude of the principal botanical halts, soon
becomes a pretext for attacks on the gourd
with the rum. No sooner is a noteworthy
plant observed than somebody cries:

" Quick, let's look at the barometer! "

And we all crowd around the gourd, the
scientific Instrument coming later. The cool-
ness of the morning and our walk make us
appreciate these references to the baro-
meter so thoroughly that the level of the
stimulant falls even more swiftly than that
of the mercury. In the Interests of the im-
216

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

mediate future, I must consult TorricelH's
tube a little less often.

As the temperature grows too cold for
them, first the oak and the ilex disappear by
degrees ; then the vine and the almond-tree ;
and next the mulberry, the walnut-tree and
the white oak. Box becomes plentiful.
We enter upon a monotonous region extend-
ing from the end of the cultivated fields to
the lower boundary of the beech-woods,
where the predominant plant is Satureia mon-
tana, the winter savory, known here by its
popular name of pebre d'ase, Ass's pepper,
because of the acrid flavour of its tiny leaves,
impregnated with essential oil. Certain
small cheeses forming part of our stores are
powdered with this strong spice. Already
more than one of us is biting into them in
imagination and casting hungry glances at
the provision-bags carried by the Mule. Our
hard morning exercise has brought appetite
and more than appetite, a devouring hunger,
what Horace calls latrans stomachus. I
teach my colleagues how to stay this rum-
bling stomach until they reach the next halt;
I show them a little sorrel-plant, with arrow-
head leaves, the Rtimex scutatus, or French
sorrel; and, practising what I preach, I pick
217

The Hunting Wasps

a mouthful. At first they laugh at my sug-
gestion. I let them laugh and soon see them
all occupied, each more eagerly than his fel-
low, in plucking the precious sorrel.

While chewing the bitter leaves, we come
to the beeches. These are first big, solitary
bushes, trailing on the ground; soon after,
dwarf trees, clustering close together; and,
finally, mighty trunks, forming a dense and
gloomy forest, whose soil is a mass of rough
limestone blocks. Bowed down in winter by
the weight of the snow, battered all the year
round by the fierce gusts of the mistral, many
of the trees have lost their branches and are
twisted into grotesque positions, or even lie
flat on the ground. An hour or more is
spent in crossing this wooded zone, which
from a distance shows against the sides of
the Ventoux like a black belt. Then once
more the beeches become bushy and scat-
tered. We have reached their upper bound-
ary and, to the great relief of all of us,
despite the sorrel-leaves, we have also
reached the stopping-place selected for our
lunch.

We are at the source of the Grave, a
slender stream of water caught, as it bubbles
from the ground, in a series of long beech-
218

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

trunk troughs, where the mountain shepherds
come to water their flocks. The temperature
of the spring is 45 °F.; and its coolness is a
priceless boon for us who have come from
the sultry oven of the plain. The cloth is
spread on a charming carpet of Alpine plants,
with glittering among them the thyme-leaved
paronychia, whose wide, thin bracts look like
silver scales. The food is taken out of the
bags, the bottles extracted from their bed of
hay. On this side are the joints, the legs of
mutton stuffed with garlic, the stacks of
loaves; on that, the tasteless chickens, for our
grinders to toy with presently, when the edge
has been taken off our appetite. At no great
distance, set in a place of honour, are the
Ventoux cheeses spiced with winter savory,
the little pebre d'ase cheeses, flanked by
Aries sausages, whose pink flesh is mottled
with cubes of bacon and whole pepper-corns.
Over here, in this corner, are green olives still
dripping with brine and black olives soaking
in oil; in that other, Cavaillon melons, some
white, some orange, to suit every taste; and,
down there, a jar of anchovies which make
you drink hard and so keep your strength up.
Lastly, the bottles are cooling in the ice-cold
water of the trough over there. Have we
219

The Hunting Wasps

forgotten anything? Yes, we have not men-
tioned the crowning side-dish, the onions, to
be eaten raw with salt. Our two Parisians
— for we have two among us, my fellow-bota-
nists — are at first a little startled by this
very invigorating bill of fare; soon they will
be the first to burst into praises. Are we all
ready? Then let us sit down.

And now begins one of those Homeric
repasts which mark red-letter days in one's
life. The first mouthfuls are almost
frenzied. Slices of mutton and chunks of
bread follow one another with alarming
rapidity. Each of us, without communicat-
ing his apprehensions to the others, casts an
anxious glance at the victuals and asks him-
self:

" If this is the way we are going on, shall
we have enough for to-night and to-mor-
row?"

However, the craving is allayed; we began
by devouring in silence, we now eat and talk.
Our apprehensions for the morrow are like-
wise relieved; and we give due credit to the
man who o-rdered the menu, who foresaw
this hunger-fit and who arranged to cope with
it worthily. The time has come for us to
appreciate the victuals as connoisseurs. One
220

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

praises the olives, stabbing them one by one
with the point of his knife; another lauds the
anchovies as he cuts up the little ochre-col-
oured fishes on his bread; a third waxes en-
thusiastic about the sausage ; and all with one
accord extol the pebre d'ase cheeses, no
larger than the palm of a man's hand.
Pipes and cigars are lit; and we stretch our-
selves on our backs in the grass, with the sun
shining down upon us.

An hour's rest and we are off again, for
time presses. The guide with the baggage
will go alone, towards the west, skirting the
edge of the woods, which has a Mule-path.
He will wait for us at the Jas, or Batiment,
on the upper boundary of the beeches, some
5,000 feet above the level of the sea. The
Jas is a large stone hut, which is to shelter us,
man and beast, to-night. As for us, we con-
tinue the ascent to the ridge, by following
which we shall reach the highest peak more
easily. From the top, after sunset, we shall
go down to the Jas, where the guide will have
arrived long before us. This is the plan pro-
posed and adopted.

We reach the crested ridge. On the
south, the comparatively easy slopes which
we have just climbed stretch as far as the eye

221

The Hunting Wasps

can see; on the north, the scene is full of wild
grandeur: the mountain, sometimes hewn
perpendicularly, sometimes carved into rough
steps, alarmingly steep, is little else than a
sheer precipice a mile high. If you throw a
stone, it never stops, but falls from rock to
rock until it reaches the bottom of the valley,
where you can distinguish the bed of the
Toulourenc looking like a ribbon. While
my companions loosen masses of rock and
send them rolling into the abyss so that they
may watch the frightful fall, I discover under
a broad flat stone one of my old insect ac-
quaintances, the Hairy Ammophila, whom I
had always met by herself on the road-side
banks in the plain, whereas here, almost at
the top of the Ventoux, I find her to the num-
ber of several hundreds heaped up under one
and the same shelter.

I was beginning to investigate the reasons
for this agglomeration, when the southerly
breeze, which already during the morning
had inspired us with a few vague fears, sud-
denly brought up a cohort of clouds which
melted into rain. Before we knew it, we
were shrouded in a thick, drizzling mist,
which prevented us from seeing two yards in
front of us. By an unfortunate coincidence,

222

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

one of us, my good friend Delacour, had
strayed aside in search of Euphorbia saxitalis,
one of the botanical curiosities of these
heights. Making a speaking-trumpet of
our hands, we shouted as one man. No
answer came. Our voices were lost In the
flaky thickness and the dull sound of the
whirling mist. As the wanderer could not
hear us, we had to look for him. In the
darkness it was Impossible to see one
another at a distance of two or three yards;
and I was the only one of the seven to know
the locality. So that nobody might be left
in the lurch, we took hands and I placed my-
self at the head of the chain. For some
minutes we played a regular game of blind-
man's buff, leading to nothing. No doubt,
on seeing the clouds drift up, Delacour, who
knew the Ventoux, had taken advantage of
the last gleams of light to hasten to the
shelter of the Jas. We resolved to make
for it ourselves as quickly as possible, for
already our clothes were streaming with rain
inside as well as out. Our white-duck
trousers were sticking to us like a second
skin,

A serious difficulty arose: the hurrying
backwards and forwards, the twisting and
223

The Hunting Wasps

turning, while we looked about us, had re-
duced me to the plight of a person whose eyes
are bandaged and who is then made to spin
round on his heels. I had lost all sense of
direction; I had not the least idea which was
the southern slope. I questioned this man
and that; opinions were divided and most un-
certain. The upshot was that not one of us
could say where the north lay and where the
south. Never in all my life had I realized
the value of the points of the compass as I
did at that moment. All around us was the
mystery of the grey haze; beneath our feet
we could just make out the beginning of a
slope here and a slope there. But which was
the right one? We had to make a choice
and to launch out boldly. If, by bad luck,
we went down the northern slope, we risked
breaking our bones over the precipices the
sight of which had but now filled us with
dread. Perhaps not one of us would survive
it. I passed a few minutes of acute perplex-

" Let's stay here," said the majority, " and
wait till the rain stops."

" That's bad advice," replied the others, of
whom I was one, "that's bad advice: the
rain may last a long while; and, wet through
224

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

as we are, we shall freeze on the spot at the
first chill of night."

My worthy friend Bernard Verlot, who
had come from the Paris Jardin des Plantes
on purpose to climb the Ventoux in my com-
pany, displayed an imperturbable calmness,
trusting to my good sense to get us out of our
scrape. I drew him a little to one side, in
order not to increase the panic of the others,
and revealed my terrible fears to him. We
held a council of two and tried to make up by
the compass of reasoning for the absence of
the magnetic needle.

" When the clouds came," I asked him,
" wasn't it from the south? "

" From the south, certainly."

" And, though one could hardly perceive
the wind, the rain slanted slightly from
south to north? "

" Yes, I noticed that as long as I could see
anything. Isn't that enough to tell us the
way? Let us go down on the side from
which the rain comes."

" I thought of that, but I have my doubts.
The wind is not strong enough to have a
definite direction. It may be an eddying
breeze, as happens on a mountain-top sur-
rounded by clouds. There Is nothing to tell
225

The Hunting Wasps

me that the direction is still the same and that
the wind is not now blowing from the north."

" I have my doubts also. Then what shall
we do?"

"What shall we do? That's the diffi-
culty! But look here: if the wind has not
changed, we ought to be wetter on the left,
because we got the rain on that side until
we lost our bearings. If it has changed, we
must be more or less equally wet all over.
Let us feel ourselves and decide. Will that
do?"

" Yes."

" And suppose I'm wrong? "

".You're not wrong."

The matter was explained to our compan-
ions in a few words. All felt themselves,
not outside, which would not have been
enough, but right inside their underclothing,
and it was with unspeakable relief that I
heard them unanimously declare their left
side to be much wetter than the right. The
wind had not changed. All was well; and
we determined to go towards the rain. The
chain was formed once more, with myself at
the head and Verlot in the rear, so as to leave
no stragglers behind. Before starting, I
asked my friend, for the last time :
226

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

"Well, shall we risk It?"
" Yes, let's risk it; I'll follow you."
And we plunged blindly into the for-
midable unknown.

We had not taken twenty strides, twenty
of those strides which one is not able to con-
trol on a steep slope, before all fear of
danger was over. Under our feet was not
the empty space of the abyss but the longed-^
for ground, the ground covered with small
stones, which rolled down in long torrents.
To all of us, this rattling sound, denoting a
firm footing, was heavenly music. In a few
minutes we reached the upper edge of the
beeches. Here the darkness was even
greater than at the top of the mountain: we
had to stoop to the ground to see where we
wefe walking. How, in the gloom, were we
to find the Jas, buried away in the dense
wood? Two plants, the assiduous haunters
of places frequented by man — the Cheno-
podium bonus-Henricus, or good-king-Henry,
and the common nettle — served me as a
clue. I swept my free hand through the
air as I went along. Each sting that I felt
told me of a nettle, in other words, a land-
mark. Verlot, in the rear, also lunged about
as best he could and let smarting stings make
227

The Hunting Wasps

up for the lack of vision. Our companions
had but little faith in this style of recon-
noitring. They spoke of continuing the
furious descent, of going back, if necessary,
all the way to Bedoin. Verlot, more trustful
of the botanical insight with which he himself
was so richly endowed, joined me in pursuing
our search, in reassuring the more demoral-
ized and in showing them that it was possible,
by questioning the plants with our hands, to
reach our night's lodging in spite of the dark-
ness. They gave way to our arguments;
and, not long after, pressing on from one
clump of nettles to another, our party arrived
at the Jas.

There we found Delacour, as well as the
guide with our luggage, sheltered betimes
from the rain. A blazing fire and a change
of clothes soon restored our wonted cheerful-
ness. A block of snow, Brought from the
valley near by, was hung in a bag In front of
the hearth. A bottle caught the water as the
snow melted: this was the cistern for our
evening meal. And the night was spent on
a bed of beech-leaves, rubbed Into powder by
our predecessors; and they were numerous.
Who knows how many years had passed since
228

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

that mattress, now a vegetable mould, was
last renewed!

Those who could not sleep were told off to
keep up the fire. There was no lack of hands
to stir it, for the smoke, which had no other
outlet than a large hole made by the partial
collapse of the roof, filled the hut with an
atmosphere fit to smoke herrings. To ob-
tain a few mouthfuls of breathable air, we
had to seek them in the lower strata, with our
noses almost on the ground. And so we
coughed and cursed and poked the fire, but
vainly tried to sleep. We were all afoot by
two o'clock in the morning, ready to climb
the highest cone and watch the sunrise. The
rain had stopped, the sky was glorious,
promising a perfect day.

During the ascent, some of us felt a sort of
seasickness, caused first by fatigue and sec-
ondly by the rarefaction of the air. The
barometer had fallen 5.4 inches ; the air which
we were breathing had lost a fifth of its den-
sity and was therefore one-fifth less rich in
oxygen. Had we been in good condition,
this slight alteration in the air would have
passed unnoticed; but, coming immediately
after the exertions of the day before and a
229

The Hunting Wasps

sleepless night, it increased our discomfort.
And so we chmbed slowly, with aching legs
and panting chests. More than one of us
had to stop and rest after every twentieth
step.

At last we were there. We took refuge in
the rustic chapel of Sainte-Croix to take
breath and counteract the nipping morning
air by a pull at the gourd, which this time was
drained to the last drop. Soon the sun rose.
Ventoux projected to the extreme limits of
the horizon its triangular shadow, whose
sides became brightly tinged with violet by
the effect of the diffracted rays. To the
south and west stretched misty plains, where,
when the sun was higher in the heavens, we
should be able to make out the Rhone, look-
ing like a silver thread. On the north and
east, under our feet, lay an enormous bank
of clouds, a sort of ocean of cotton-wool,
whence peeped, like islands of slag, the dark
summits of the lower mountains. A few
tops, with their trailing glaciers, gleamed in
the direction of the Alps.

But botany called our attention and we
had to tear ourselves from this magic spec-
tacle. The time of our ascent, in August,
was a little late in the year; many plants were
230

An Ascent of Mont Ventoux

no longer in flower. Would you do some
really fruitful herborizing? Be there in the
first fortnight of July; above all, be ahead of
the grazing herds : where the Sheep has
browsed you will gather none but wretched
leavings. While still spared by the hungry
flocks, the top of the Ventoux in July is a
literal bed of flowers; its loose stony surface
is studded with them. My memory recalls,
all streaming with the morning dew, those
elegant tufts of Androsace villosa, with its
pink-centred white blooms; the Mont-Cenis
violet, spreading Its great blue blossoms over
the chips of limestone; the spikenard
valerian, which blends the sweet perfume of
Its flowers with the offensive odour of Its
roots; the wedge-leaved globularia, forming
close carpets of bright green dotted with blue
capitula; the Alpine forget-me-not, whose
blue rivals that of the skies; the Candolla
candytuft, whose tiny stalk bears a dense
head of little white flowers and goes winding
among the loose stones; the opposite-leaved
saxifrage and the musky saxifrage, both of
them packed into little dark cushions,
studded In the first case with purple flowers
and in the second with white flowers washed
with yellow. When the sun's rays are hot-
231

The Hunting Wasps

ter, we shall see fluttering Idly from one tuft
of blossom to another a magnificent Butterfly
with white wings adorned with four bright-
crimson spots, surrounded with black. 'Tis
Parnasstus Apollo, the beautiful occupant of
the Alpine solitudes, near the eternal snows.
Her caterpillar lives on the saxifrages.

Here let us end this sketch of the sweet
joys that await the naturalist on the summit
of Mont Ventoux and return to the Hairy
Ammophlla, who was lurking yesterday In
her legions under the shelter of a stone when
the misty rain came and enshrouded us.

232

CHAPTER XII

THE TRAVELLERS

T HAVE told in the last chapter how, on
■■■ the ridges of Mont Ventoux, at a height
of nearly 6,000 feet, I had one of those
entomological windfalls which would be rich
in results if they occurred often enough to
serve the purpose of continuous study. Un-
fortunately, mine was a solitary instance and
I despair of ever repeating it, I can there-
fore only base conjectures on it, In the hope
that future observers will replace my sur-
mises with certainties.

Under the shelter of a broad, flat stone I
discovered some hundreds of Ammophilae
{A. hirsuta)^ heaped one on top of the other
almost as closely as the Bees in a swarm. As
soon as I lifted the stone, all this little hairy
world began to run about, without making
any attempt to fly away. I shifted the mass
by handfuls: not one of the Wasps looked as
though she wished to desert the rest. They
seemed indissolubly united by common inter-
ests; none of them would go unless all went.
233

The Hunting Wasps

I examined with every possible care the flat
stone that sheltered them, as well as the
ground underneath and just around it, and
discovered not a thing to tell me the cause of
this strange assemblage. Having nothing
better left to do, I tried to count them; and
it was then that the clouds came and put an
end to my observations and plunged us into
that darkness of which I have described the'
anxious consequences. At the first drops of
rain, before leaving the spot, I hastened to
put back the stone and replace the Ammo-
philae in their shelter. I give myself a good
mark, which I hope that the reader will con-
firm, for having taken the precaution not to
leave the poor insects whom my curiosity had
disturbed at the mercy of the downpour.

The Hairy Ammophila is not rare in the
plains, but she is always found singly by the
side of the paths or on the sandy slopes, now
engaged in digging her well, anon busily cart-
ing her heavy caterpillar. She lives alone,
like the Languedocian Sphex; and it was a
great surprise to me to come upon such a
number of this species collected under one
and the same stone almost at the top of Mont
Ventoux. Instead of the isolated specimen
which I had known hitherto, a crowded com-
234

The Travellers

pany presented itself to my eyes. Let us try
to trace the probable causes of this agglomer-
ation.

The Hairy Ammophila is one of the very
rare exceptions among the Digger-wasps in
the matter of nest-building: she gets hers
ready in the early days of spring. Towards
the end of March, if the season be mild, or at
latest in the first fortnight of April, when the
Crickets assume the adult form and labor-
iously cast the skin of infancy on the
threshold of their homes, when the poet's-
narcissus puts forth its first flowers and the
Bunting utters his long-drawn call from the
top of the poplars in the fields, Ammophila
hirsuta is at work digging a home for her
grubs and victualling it, whereas the other
Ammophilse and the various Hunting Wasps
in general postpone this labour until autumn,
during September and October. This early
nidification, preceding by six months the date
adopted by the vast majority, at once suggests
a few reflections.

We wonder if the Ammophilae whom we
find occupied with their burrows in the first
days of April are really insects of that year,
that is to say, if these spring workers com-
pleted their metamorphosis and left their
235

The Hunting Wasps

cocoons during the previous three months.
The general rule is for the Digger to become
a perfect insect, to quit her subterranean
dwelling and to busy herself with her larvse
all in one season. Most of the Predatory
Wasps leave the galleries where they lived
as larvae In the months of June and July and
display their talents as miners and hunters in
the following months of August, September
and October.

Does a similar law apply to the Hairy Am-
mophlla? Does the same season witness the
insect's final transformation and Its labours?
It is very doubtful, for the Wasp occupied on
the work of the burrow at the end of March
would In that case have to complete her
metamorphosis and to break out of her
cocoon during the winter, or at latest in Feb-
ruary. The seve»rlty of the climate at this
period does not allow us to accept such a
conclusion. It Is not at a time when the
bleak mistral howls for a fortnight without
intermission and freezes the ground hard, it
is not at a time when snow-storms follow
close upon that Icy blast that the delicate
transformations of the nymphosis are able to
take place or the Insect to dream of abandon-
ing the shelter of Its cocoon. It needs the
236

The Travellers

warm moisture of the earth under the sum-
mer sun before it can leave its cell.

If I knew the exact period at which the
Hairy Ammophila emerges from her native
burrow, this would help me greatly;^ but, to
my intense regret, I do not know it. My
notes, collected day by day, with the lack of
order inevitable in a type of research that is
constantly subject to the hazards of the un-
foreseen, are silent on this point, of which I
clearly perceive the importance now that I
am trying to arrange my materials in order to
write these lines. I find the Sandy Ammo-
phila mentioned as hatching on the 5th of
June and the Silvery Ammophila on the
20th of that month; but my records con-
tain not a word that relates to the hatch-
ing of the Hairy Ammophila. It is a de-
tail which, by an oversight, has never been
cleared up. The dates given for the other
two species come under the general law, which
lays down that the perfect insect shall appear
during the hot season. I fix the same period,
by analogy, as that for the Hairy Ammo-
phila's emergence from the cocoon. _

Then whence come the Ammophilae whom
we see working at their burrows at the end
of March and in April? We are driven to
237

The Hunting Wasps

the conclusion that these Wasps belong not
to the present but to the previous year; that
they left their cells at the usual time, in June
and July, got through the winter and began to
make their nests as soon as the spring came.
In a word, they are hibernating insects.
And this conclusion is fully borne out by ex-
periment.

If we will but search patiently in the per-
pendicular banks of earth or sand facing due
south, especially those in which generations
of different honey-gathering Bees have suc-
ceeded one another year after year and
riddled the wall with a labyrinth of tunnels
until it looks like an enormous sponge, we are
almost sure, in midwinter, to find the Hairy
Ammophila snugly ensconced in the shelters
provided by the sunny bank, alone or in
groups of three or four, idly awaiting the
arrival of the fine weather. I have been able
to give myself as often as I wished this little
treat of renewing my acquaintance, amid the
gloom and cold of winter, with the pretty
Wasp who enlivens the greensward beside
the paths at the first notes of the Bunting and
the Cricket. When there is no wind and the
sun is shining brightly, the warmth-loving
insect comes to its threshold to bask lux-
238

The Travellers

uriously in the hottest rays, or it will even
timidly venture outside and, step by step,
stroll over the surface of the spongy bank,
polishing its wings as it goes. Even so does
the little Grey Lizard behave, when the sun
once more begins to warm the old wall that
represents his native land.

But vain would be our search in winter,
even in the most sheltered refuges, for a
Cerceris, Sphex, Philanthus, Bembex or other
Wasp with carnivorous grubs. All died
after their autumnal labours and their race is
not represented, in the cold season, save by
the larvae slumbering in their cells. It is,
then, by a most rare exception that the Hairy
Ammophila, hatched in the hot season, spends
the following winter in some warm shelter;
and this is the reason why she appears so
very early in the spring.

With these data to go upon, let us try to
explain the cluster of Ammophilae which I
observed on the ridges of Mont Ventoux.
What could these numerous Wasps have been
doing, heaped up under their stone? Were
they preparing to take up their winter-
quarters there and, slumbering under cover,
to await the season favourable to their work?
Everything tends to show that this is im-
239

The Hunting Wasps

probable. It Is not in August, at the hottest
time of year, that an animal is overcome with
its winter drowsiness. Nor is it any use to
suggest the want of food, of honeyed juices
sucked from the flowers. The September
showers are at hand; and vegetation, sus-
pended for a moment by the heat of the dog-
days, will gather fresh vigour and cover the
fields with blossoms almost as diverse as
those of spring. This season of revelry for
the majority of Wasps and Bees could never
be a period of torpor for the Hairy Am-
mophila.

And then have we any right to imagme
that the heights of Ventoux, swept by the
gusts of the mistral, which sometimes up-
roots both beech and pine; that crests where
the north-wind sends the snow-flakes whirling
for six months in succession; that peaks
wrapped for the best part of the year in cold
cloud-fogs can be adopted as a winter refuge
by an insect enamoured of the sun? One
might as well suggest that it should hibernate
among the ice-floes of the North Cape._ No,
it is not here that the' Hairy Ammophila can
spend the cold season. The group which I
observed was only passing through. At the
first hint of rain, a hint that escaped us but
240

The Travellers

could not escape the insect, which is so highly
sensitive to the atmospheric variations, the
band of travellers had tal^en shelter under a
stone, waiting for the rain to stop before
resuming their flight. Whence did they
come ? Whither were they bent ?

In this same month of August and still
more in September, we are visited, In our
warm, olive-clad regions, by caravans of little
birds of passage descending by easy stages
from the countries where they have wooed
and loved, countries cooler, more thickly
wooded, less wild than ours, where they have
reared their broods. They arrive almost on
a fixed day, In an unvarying order, as though
guided by the dates of a calendar known only
to themselves. They sojourn for some time
In our plains, a halting-place rich in insects,
which form the exclusive fare of most of
them; they ransack every clod In our fields,
where the ploughshare by now has laid bare
In the furrows a mukitude of grubs, their
special delight; thanks to this diet, they soon
put on a fine cushion of fat, a storehouse of
reserve provisions for the coming exertions;
and at last, supplied with this viaticum, they
continue their southward flight, making for
the winterless lands where Insects are never
241

The Hunting Wasps

lacking: Spain, Southern Italy, the Mediter-
ranean islands and Africa. This is the sea-
son for brave sport with the gun and for
dainty roasts of small birds.

The first to arrive is the Shore-lark, or, as
he is called in these parts, the Creoti.
August is hardly here before we see him ex-
ploring the pebbly fields, in search of the
little seeds of setaria, an ill weed that over-
runs our tilled soil. At the least alarm, he
flies away with a harsh clattering in his throat
which is not badly represented by his Pro-
vencal name. He is soon followed by the
Whin-chat, who preys placidly on small
Weevils, Locusts and Ants in the old lucern-
fields. With him begins the long line of
small winged things, the glory of the spit.
It is continued, when September comes, by
the most famous of them, the Common
Wheat-ear, or White-tail, extolled by all who
are able to appreciate his exalted qualities.
No Beccafico of the Roman epicures, immor-
talized in Martial's epigrams, ever equalled
the exquisite, scented ball of fat that is the
Wheat-ear, grown shamefully stout on glut-
tonous living. He is an unbridled devourer
of every kind of insect. The notes which I
have taken as a sportsman and naturalist bear
242

The Travellers

witness to the contents of his gizzard. It
includes the whole little world of the fallow
fields: grubs and Weevils of every species,
Locusts, Tortoise-beetles, Golden Apple-
beetles, Crickets, Earwigs, Ants, Spiders,
Wood-lice, Snails, Millipedes and ever so
many others. And, as a change from this
full-flavoured diet, there are grapes, black-
berries and dogberries. Such Is the bill of
fare for which the Wheat-ear is ever in
search, as he flies from clod to clod, with the
white feathers of his outspread tail giving
him that fictitious look of a Butterfly on the
wing. And Heaven knows what prodigies
of plumpness he is able to achieve.

He has only one master in the art of self
fattening. This is one whose migration syn-
chronizes with his, one who is likewise an
enthusiastic insect-eater: the Bush-pipit, as
the nomenclators so absurdly call him,
whereas the dullest of our shepherds never
hesitates to speak of him as the Grasset, the
champion fat bird. The name in itself fully
describes his leading characteristic. No
other achieves such a degree of obesity. A
moment comes when, laden with pads of fat
up to its wings, its neck and the back of its
head, the bird looks like a little pat of butter.
243

The Hunting Wasps

The poor thing can hardly flutter from one
mulberry-tree to the next, where it stops to
pant in the thick leafage, half-choked with
melting fat, a martyr to its passion for
Weevils.

October brings us the slender White Wag-
tail, half pearly grey, half white, with a large
black-velvet chest-protector. The graceful
little bird, trotting along and cocking up its
tail, follows the ploughman almost under the
horses' feet and picks the grubs in the new-
turned furrow. About the same time the
Skylark arrives, first in little companies sent
out as scouting-partles, next in countless bat-
talions, which take possession of the corn-
fields and fallow land, with their plentiful
setaria-seeds, the bird's usual fare. Then, in
the plain, amid the universal glitter of dew-
drops and rime-crystals hanging from every
blade of grass, the treacherous mirror shoots
forth its intermittent flashes in the rays of the
morning sun; then the little Owl, released by
the hunter's hand, makes his short flight,
alights, starts up again convulsively, rolling
frightened eyes ; and the Lark arrives, dipping
on the wing, curious to obtain a closer view of
the bright apparatus or the grotesque bird.
He is there, in front of you, a dozen yards
244

The Travellers

away, with feet pendant and wings outspread
hke the Dove in a sacred picture. Now
then : take aim and fire ! I wish my readers
the excitement of this fascinating sport.

With the Skylark, often in the same com-
panies, comes the Tit-lark, commonly called
the Sisi. Here again an onomatopoeia gives
us the bird's little call-note. None goes with
greater fury for the Owl, round whom he
manoeuvres and hovers constantly. But we
will not continue the list of the birds of pass-
age that visit us. Most of them make but a
short halt here; they stay for a few weeks,
attracted by the abundance of food, especially
of insects; then, plump and strong, they
pursue their southward journey. Others,
fewer these, take up their winter-quarters in
our plains, where snow Is very rare and where
thousands of little seeds lie exposed on the
ground, even In the depth of winter. One of
these is the Skylark, who gives his attention to
the corn-fields and fallows; another is the
Titlark, who prefers the lucern-fields and
meadows.

The Skylark, so common in almost every

part of France, does not nest In the Vaucluse

plains, where his place Is taken by the Crested

Lark, that frequenter of the broad highway,

245

The Hunting Wasps

the roadmender's friend. But one need not
go far north to find the favourite spots for the
Skylark's broods: the next department, the
Drome, is rich in his nests. It is very
probable therefore that, out of the numbers
of Skylarks that come to take possession of
our plains for the whole of autumn and
winter, there are many that travel no farther
than the Drome. They have only to migrate
to the next department to find plains free
from snow and a steady supply of tiny seeds.
A like migration to a short distance seems to
me to have caused the crowd of Ammophilae
which I surprised near the top of Mont
Ventoux. I have shown that this Wasp
spends the winter in the perfect insect-state,
hidden in some shelter and waiting until April
to make her nest. She also, like the Skylark,
must take her precautions against the frosty
season. Though she need not fear the lack
of food, being capable of fasting until the
return of the flowers, she must at least, deli-
cate creature that she is, guard against the
fatal attacks of the cold. She will therefore
flee snowy country, the districts where the
ground freezes to a great depth; she will
assemble in a migratory caravan, after the
manner of the birds, and, crossing hill and
246

The Travellers

dale, will select a home In old walls and sandy
banks warmed by the southern sun. Then,
when the cold is past, all or part of the troop
will return to the place whence they came.
This would explain the Ventoux band of
Ammophilse. It was a travelling tribe
which, coming from the cold uplands of the
Drome and descending into the warm plains
beloved of the olive-tree, had crossed the
wide, deep valley of the Toulourenc and,
when surprised by the rain, had called a halt
on the mountain-ridge. Apparently, there-
fore, the Hairy Ammophila has to migrate in
order to escape the cold of winter. At the
time when the little birds of passage start
their procession of caravans, she too journeys
from a colder to a warmer neighbourhood.
She has but to cross a few valleys and a few
mountains to find the climate which she wants.
I have two other instances of extraordinary
gatherings of insects at great heights. In
October, I have found the chapel at the sum-
mit of Mont Ventoux covered with Coccinella
septempiinctata, the Seven-spot Ladybird.
The insects clinging to the stone of both the
roof and walls were packed so close together
that the rude edifice looked, from a little way
off, like a piece of coral-work. I should not
247

The Hunting Wasps

care to guess the myriad numbers of the
Ladybirds collected there. Those Aphis-
eaters had certainly not been attracted by the
hope of food to the top of the Ventoux, some
6,000 feet above the level of the sea. Veg-
etation is too scanty up there; and no Plant-
louse ever ventured so high.

On another occasion, in June, on the table-
land of Saint-Amans, a neighbour of the
Ventoux, at a height of 2,400 feet, I wit-
nessed a similar gathering, only much less
numerous. At the most prominent part of
the plateau, on the edge of a bluff of perpen-
dicular rocks, stands a cross with a pedestal
of hewn stone. On each face of this pedestal
and on the rocks supporting it, the same
Beetles, the Seven-spot Ladybirds of the Ven-
toux, had gathered in their legions. The in-
sects were mostly stationary; but, wherever
the sun beat at all fiercely, there was a con-
tinual exchange between the newcomers, anx-
ious to find room, and the old occupants of
the wayside cross, who took to their wings
only to return after a short flight.

Nothing here, any more than on the sum-
mit of the Ventoux, was able to tell me the
cause of these strange meetings on arid spots,
containing no Plant-lice and possessing no
248

The Travellers

attraction for Ladybirds; nothing suggested
the secret of these crowded gatherings on
masonry situated at a great height. Were
these again instances of entomological migra-
tion? Were they general musterlngs, similar
to that of the Swallows on the day before
their common departure? Were they meet-
ing-places whence the swarm of Ladybirds
was to make for some district richer in
edibles? It is possible, but it is also very
extraordinary. The Ladybird has rarely
been noted as a devotee of travel. She seems
to us a very stay-at-home creature when we
see her butchering the Green-fly on our rose-
trees and the Black-fly on our beans; and yet,
with her short wings, she holds plenary as-
semblies. In immense numbers, on the summit
of Mont Ventoux, where the Martin himself
ascends only at moments of violent energy.
Why these meetings at such altitudes?
What can be the reason of this predilection
for blocks of masonry?

249

CHAPTER XIII

THE AMMOPHIL^

A SLENDER waist, a slim shape; an ab-
domen tapering very much at the upper
part and fastened to the body as though by a
thread; black raiment with a red sash across
the belly : there you have a summary descrip-
tion of these burrowers, who are akin to the
Sphex in form and colouring, but differ greatly
from them in habits. The Sphex hunt Or-
thoptera — Locusts, Grasshoppers, Crickets
— while caterpillars are the quarry of the
Ammophilas. This change of prey in Itself
suggests new methods in the lethal tactics of
instinct.

If the name did not sound so pleasant to
the ear, I would willingly quarrel with the
term Ammophila, which means " sand-lover,"
as being too exclusive and often erroneous.
The real lovers of sand, of dry, dusty, stream-
ing sand, are the Bembex, who prey on Flies;
but the caterpillar-hunters, whose story I now
propose to relate, have no predilection for
ordinary shifting sand and even avoid it as
250

The Ammophilae

being liable to landslips on the slightest
provocation. Their perpendicular shaft,
which has to remain open until the cell
receives the provisions and an egg, requires a
firmer setting if it is not to be prematurely
blocked. What they want is a light soil,
easily tunnelled, in which the sandy element
is cemented with a little clay and lime.
Edges of paths, sunny banks where the grass
is rather bare: those are the favourite spots.
In spring, quite early in April, we see the
Hairy Ammophila {A. hirsiita) there; when
September and October come, we find the
Sandy Ammophila {A. sabulosa), the Sil-
very Ammophila {A. argentata) and the
Silky Ammophila {A. holosericea) . I will
here condense the information which I have
gathered from the four species.

In the case of all four, the burrow is a
vertical shaft, a sort of well, possessing at
most the diameter of a thick goose-quill and
a depth of about two inches. At the bottom
is the cell, which is always solitary and con-
sists of a mere widening of the entrance-
shaft. It is, when all is said, a poor lodg-
ing, obtained economically, in one day's
work; the larva will find no protection there
against the winter except from the four wrap-
251

The Hunting Wasps

pers of its cocoon, copied from that of the
Sphex. The Ammophila digs by herself,
quietly, without hurrying, without any joyous
enthusiasm. As usual, the fore-tarsi serve as
rakes and the mandibles do duty as mining-
tools. When some grain of sand offers
too much resistance to its removal, you hear
rising from the bottom of the well, as though
to give voice to the insect's efforts, a sort
of shrill grating sound produced by the quiv-
ering of the wings and of the whole body.
At frequent intervals the Wasp appears in
the open with a load of refuse in her teeth,
some bit of gravel which she flies away with
and drops at a distance of a few inches, so
as not to litter the place. Of the grains ex-
tracted some appear to deserve special atten-
tion, owing to their shape and size; at least,
the Ammophila does not treat them as she
does the rest: instead of flying off and drop-
ping them far from the workyard, she re-
moves them on foot and lays them near the
well. These are picked materials, ready-
made blocks of stone which will serve pre-
sently for closing the dwelling.

This outside work is performed with meas-
ured movements and solemn diligence. The
insect stands high on its legs, with its ab-

252

The Ammophilae

domen stretched at the end of Its long pedicle,
and turns round slowly, pivoting its whole
body stiffly, with the geometrical rigidity of
a line revolving on Itself. If It wishes to
fling to a distance the rubbish which it thinks
will be In the way, It does so In short silent
flights, often backwards, as though the Wasp,
emerging from her well head last, avoided
turning, so as to save time. It is the species
carrying their abdomens on the longest stalks,
such as the Sandy Ammophlla and the Silky
Ammophila, which mainly display this auto-
maton-like rigidity in action. That belly
swelling into a pear at the end of a thread
Is In fact a very delicate thing to steer: a sud-
den movement might warp the fine stalk. So
we must walk with a sort of geometrical
rigour; if we have to fly, we will do so back-
wards, to avoid tacking too often. On the
other hand, the Hairy Ammophlla, who has
a short abdominal pedicle, works at her bur-
row with the heedless, nimble movements
which we admire in most of the Digger-
wasps. She has more freedom of action, be-
cause her belly does not get In her way.

The home is dug. At a later hour in the
day, or even merely when the sun has left
the place where the burrow has just been
253

The Hunting Wasps

bored, the Ammophlla invariably visits the
httle heap of stones placed in reserve during
the excavating, with the object of choosing
a bit to suit her. If there is nothing that
satisfies her needs, she explores the neigh-
bourhood and soon discovers what she wants,
a small flat stone slightly larger in diameter
than the mouth of her hole. She carries off
this slab In her mandibles and lays it, as a
temporary door, over the opening of the
burrow. To-morrow, when the weather is
once more hot and the sun bathes the slopes
and encourages hunting, the Wasp will know
quite well how to find her home, rendered
inviolable by the massive door; she will come
back with a paralysed caterpillar, grasped by
the skin of its neck and dragged between Its
captor's legs; she will lift the slab, which
nothing distinguishes from other little stones
around and which she alone is able to iden-
tify; she will let down the game to the bot-
tom of the well, lay her egg and close the
house for good by sweeping Into the perpen-
dicular shaft all the rubbish which she has
kept in the vicinity.

Time after time, the Sandy Ammophlla
and the Silvery Ammophlla have shown me
this temporary closing of the hole when the
254

The Ammophilae

sun begins to go down and when the lateness
of the hour compels the victualling to be
put off till the morrow. When the dwelling
had been sealed up by the Wasp, I too would
postpone my observations till the next day,
but only after first mailing a map of the
ground, choosing my lines and landmarks and
planting a few stalks as signposts to show
me the way to the well when it was filled.
If I did not come back very early in the morn-
ing, if I left the Wasp time to take advantage
of the hours of bright sunshine, I invariably
found the burrow finally stocked with pro-
visions and closed.

This faithfulness of memory is striking.
The Wasp, delayed in her task, puts off the
rest of her work to the next day. She does
not spend the evening, she does not spend
the night in the home which she has just
dug: on the contrary, she leaves the premises
altogether and goes away, after concealing
the entrance with a little stone. The local-
ity is not familiar to her; she knows it no
better than any other spot, for the Ammo-
philae behave like the Languedocian Sphex
and lodge their families here or there, wher-
ever they happen to roam. The Wasp was
there by chance; the soil suited her; she dug
255

The Hunting Wasps

her burrow; and she now goes off. Where
to? Who can tell? Perhaps to the flowers
not far away, where, by the last gleams of
daylight, she will sip a drop of sugary liquid
at the bottom of the cups, even as our miners,
after toiling In their dark galleries, fly for
comfort to the bottle in the evening. She
goes off, to a less or greater distance, stopping
at this bin and that in the flowers' cellar.
The evening, the night, the morning slip by.
Still, she must return to the burrow and com-
plete her task, she must return after the
marches and countermarches of the morning
hunt and the bewildering flight from flower
to flower during the libations of the evening
before. That the Social Wasp should re-
turn to her nest and the Social Bee to her
hive does not surprise me at all: the hive
and the nest are permanent residences, the
way to which becomes known by long practice ;
but the Ammophila has no acquaintance with
the locality which could help her to return
to her burrow after such a long absence.
Her tunnel Is at a spot which she perhaps vis-
ited yesterday for the first time and which
she must find again to-morrow, when she Is
quite out of her bearings and moreover ham-
pered with a heavy load of game. Never-
256

The Ammophils

theless this Httle feat of topographical mem-
ory is performed, sometimes with a precision
that left me astounded. The Wasp would
walk straight to her burrow as if she had
long been using all the little paths in the
neighbourhood. At other times, she would
wander backwards and forwards and renew
her search over and over again.

If the quest is greatly prolonged, the prey,
which is a troublesome burden when you are
in a hurry to find your home, is laid down in
some high place, on a cluster of thyme or a
tuft of grass, where it will be well in sight
presently, when wanted. Thus eased, the
Ammophila resumes her active search. I
made a pencil-sketch, as she moved about, of
the tracks followed. The result was a med-
ley of tangled lines, with sudden bends and
turns, branches in and branches out, wind-
ings and repeated intersections, in short, a
regular labyrinth whose complicated maze
was an ocular demonstration of the perplex-
ity of the lost one.

When the well has been found and the
slab removed, the Wasp has to come back
to the caterpillar, which is not always done
without some groping about, in cases where
her wanderings to and fro have been very
257

The Hunting Wasps

numerous. Though she left her prey easily
visible, the Wasp appears to foresee the dif-
ficulty of finding it again when the moment
comes to drag it home. At least, if the
search is unduly prolonged, you see her sud-
denly interrupt her exploration of the ground
and return to her caterpillar, which she feels
and nibbles at for a moment, as though to
make sure that it Is really her own game, her
property. Then she hurries back again to
the field of search, which she leaves a second
time. If need be, and a third. In order to
Inspect the prey. I am not at all sure that
these repeated visits of the Wasp to the
caterpillar are not a means of refreshing her
memory of the place where she left It.

This Is what happens in exceedingly com-
plicated cases; but as a rule the Wasp goes
back quite easily to the well dug the day
before on the spot to which chance has taken
her. The vagabond's guide Is her topo-
graphical memory, whose marvellous feats
I shall have to tell later. As for me. In
order to return next day to the well hidden
under the lid of the little flat stone, I dared
not trust to my unaided memory: I needed
notes, sketches, lines of latitude and longl-
258

The Ammophilae

tude, landmarks, in short, all the minutlje of
geometry.

The temporary closing of the burrow with
a flat stone, as practised by the Sandy Ammo-
phila and the Silvery Animophila, is ap-
parently unknown to the other two spe-
cies. At any rate, I never saw their homes
protected by a lid. Besides, this absence
of a provisional door seems to be obliga-
tory upon the Hairy Ammophila. In fact,
as far as I could see, this species hunts its
prey first and then digs its burrow near the
place of capture. In this way, the storing
of the provisions can be done straight away;
and there is no need to trouble about a lid.
As for the Silky Ammophila, I suspect that
she has another reason for not employing a
temporary cover. Whereas the three others
put only one caterpillar in each burrow, she
puts in as many as five, though much smaller
ones. Just as we ourselves neglect to shut
a door through which we are constantly pass-
ing, so perhaps the Silky Ammophila neg-
lects the precaution of placing a stone over
a well down which she has to go at least five
times in a short space of time.

In the case of all four, the provisions of
259

The Hunting Wasps

the larvae consist of caterpillars of Moths.
The Silky Ammophila selects, though not ex-
clusively, those long, thin caterpillars which
walk by looping and unlooping their bodies.
Their gait suggests a pair of compasses that
makes its way by opening and closing in
turns. Hence they are known by two ex-
pressive names: Loopers and Measuring-
worms.^ The same burrow contains pro-
visions varying greatly in colour, a proof
that the Ammophila hunts without distinc-
tion every species of Loopers, provided that
they be small, for the huntress herself is
anything but large and her grub cannot get
through very much, in spite of the five pieces
of game set before her. If Loopers fail,
the Wasp falls back on other equally slender
caterpillars. Curved into a hoop as the re-
sult of the sting that paralysed them, the
five pieces are stacked up in the cell: the up-
permost carries the egg for which the pro-
visions are made.

The three other Ammophilae give only one
caterpillar to each larva. It is true that
here bulk makes up for number: the game

^The caterpillars of the Geometrae, or Geometrid
Moths, are called also Inchworms, Spanworms and Sur-
veyors. — Translator's Note.

260

The Ammophilae

selected is big, plump, capable of amply
satisfying the grub's appetite. For instance,
I have taken from the mandibles of the
Sandy Ammophila a caterpillar weighing
fifteen times as much as its captor: fifteen
times, an enormous figure when we consider
the strength which the huntress must ex-
pend in dragging game of this kind by the
skin of the neck over the countless obstacles
on the road. No other Wasp, tried in the
balance with her prey, has shown me a like
disproportion between spoiler and booty.

The almost indefinite variety of colour-
ing in the provisions which I unearth from
the burrows or see between the legs of the
Ammophilae also proves that the three bri-
gands have no preference and pounce upon
the first caterpillar which comes along, pro-
vided that it be of a suitable size, neither too
large nor too small, and that it belongs to the
Moth division. The commonest game con-
sists of those grey-clad caterpillars which
penetrate a little way into the ground and
devour the plant at the junction of root and
stem.

What governs the whole history of the
Ammophilae and more particularly attracted
my attention is the manner in which the in-
261

The Hunting Wasps

sect overpowers its prey and reduces it to the
condition of helplessness which the safety of
the larva requires. The game hunted, the
caterpillar, possesses a very different struc-
ture from that of the victims which we have
seen immolated hitherto: Buprestes, Wee-
vils, Locusts and Ephippigers. The crea-
ture Is composed of a series of similar rings
or segments set end to end. Three of these
segments, the first three, carry the real legs,
which will become the legs of the future
Moth; others have membranous legs, or pro-
legs, which are peculiar to the caterpillar
and 'not represented in the Moth; others
lastly have no limbs at all. Each segment
has its nerve-nucleus, or ganglion, the seat
of sensibility and movement, so that the
nervous system includes twelve distinct cen-
tres, separated one from the other, without
counting the ganglionic neck-piece placed
under the skull and comparable, in a manner
of speaking, with the brain.

We are here very far removed from the
nerve-centralization of the Weevils and the
Buprestes, which lends itself so well to gen-
eral paralysis by a single prick of the sting;
we are also a long way from the thoracic
ganglia which the Sphex smites, one after
262

The Ammophilae

the other, to suppress all movement in her
Crickets. Instead of a solitary centralized
point or of three nerve-nuclei, the cater-
pillar has twelve, separated from one an-
other by the distance between one segment
and the next and arranged like a string of
beads on the ventral surface, along the me-
dian line of the body. Moreover, as is the
general rule in the lower animals, where the
same organ Is repeated a great number of
times and loses power by its diffusion, these
different nerve-centres are largely independ-
ent of one another: each of them exercises
Its influence over its particular segment; and
Its functions are only very gradually affected
by the derangement of the adjoining seg-
ments. One of the caterpillar's rings can
lose its power of moving and feeling and the
remainder will nevertheless remain capable
of both for a considerable time. These
facts are enough to show the great Interest
attaching to the methods of slaughter which
the Wasp adopts with her prey.

But, while the interest is great, the diffi-
culty of observation is not small. The soli-
tary habits of the Ammophilae, their distri-
bution one by one over wide areas, the fact
that one almost always comes across them
263

The Hunting Wasps

merely by chance: all this makes it hardly
possible to carry out premeditated experi-
ments with them, any more than with the
Languedocian Sphex. You have to be on
the look-out a long time for an opportunity,
to wait for it with untiring patience and to
know how to profit by it at the very moment
when at last it presents itself, a moment when
you were not thinking of it. I watched for
that opportunity for years and years; then
one day it suddenly appeared before my eyes,
offering a facility of examination and a clear-
ness of detail that compensated me for my
long waiting.

At the beginning of my investigations, I
was twice enabled to witness the murder of
the caterpillar and I saw, as far as the swift-
ness of the operation permitted, the Wasp's
sting applied once and for all to either the
fifth or the sixth segment of the victim.
To confirm this result, I thought of ascer-
taining which ring had been stabbed on
caterpillars which I had not seen sacrificed,
but which I had taken from their captors
while they were being dragged to the bur-
row. It was no use employing a magnify-
ing-glass, for no magnifying-glass enables
one to discover the least trace of a wound
264

The Ammophilae

upon the victim. The method adopted is
the following: when the caterpillar is quite
still, I try each segment with the point of a
fine needle and thus measure the amount of
sensibility by the more or less manifest signs
of pain in the insect. When the needle
pricks the fifth segment or the sixth, even
piercing it right through, the caterpillar does
not stir. But if you prick even slightly a
second segment, behind or in front of that
insensible segment, the catei*pillar wriggles
and struggles with a violence which increases
in proportion to the distance of the point
attacked from the original segment. At the
hinder end in particular, the least touch pro-
vokes wild contortions. There was only one
sting, therefore, and it was administered to
the fifth or sixth ring.

What peculiarity then do these two seg-
ments possess that one or other of them
should be the target of the assassin's weapon?
None whatever in their organization; but
their position is another matter. Leaving
the Silky Ammophlla's Measuring-worms on
one side, I find that the prey of the others
Is organized as follows, the head being
counted as the first segment: three pairs of
real legs on the second, third and fourth
265

The Hunting Wasps

rings; four pairs of membranous legs on the
seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth rings; lastly,
a final pair of membranous legs on the thir-
teenth and last ring, making in all eight pairs
of legs, of which the first seven form two
vigorous groups, one of three, the other of
four pairs. These two groups are separ-
ated by two legless segments, which are pre-
cisely the fifth and sixth.

Now, in order to deprive the caterpillar
of its means of escape, to render it motion-
less, will the Wasp drive her sting into
each of the eight rings provided with loco-
motory organs? Above all, will she take
this superfluity of precaution when the prey
is quite weak and small? Certainly not: a
single stab will be enough; but it will be
given at a central point, whence the torpor
produced by the tiny drop of poison can
spread gradually, with the least possible de-
lay, to the segments furnished with legs.
There is no doubt about the segment to be
picked out for this single inoculation : it must
be the fifth or the sixth, which separate the
two groups of locomotory rings. The point
indicated by rational inferences is therefore
also the point adopted by instinct.

Lastly, let us add that the Ammophila's
266

The Ammophilae

egg is Invariably laid on the ring that has
been rendered insensible. Here and here
alone the young larva can bite without pro-
voking dangerous contortions; where a
needle-prick has no effect, the grub's bite will
have no effect either. The grub will thus
remain motionless until the nurseling has
gained strength and can forge ahead with-
out running a risk.

In my later researches, as the number of
my observations increased, I began to enter-
tain doubts, not as to the conclusions which
I had formed, but as to their general appli-
cation. That feeble Loopers and other
small caterpillars are rendered harmless by
a single thrust, especially when the sting
strikes the favourable spot described, is a
thing quite probable in itself and one which
can also be proved either by direct observa-
tion or by testing the insect's sensibility with
a needle. But the Sandy Ammophila and
especially the Hairy Ammophila capture
enormous victims, whose weight, as I have
said, is fifteen times that of the kidnapper.
Will this giant prey be treated in the same
manner as the frail Measuring-worm? Will
one dagger-thrust be sufficient to subdue the
monster and render it incapable of doing
267

The Hunting Wasps

harm? Will the horrid Grey Worm, lash-
ing the walls of the cell with its powerful
tail, not endanger either the egg or the little
grub? We dare not picture the encounter,
in the narrow cell of the burrow, between
those two, the feeble, new-hatched creature
and that dragony thing still possessing free-
dom in its movements to twist and untwist
its tortuous coils.

My suspicions were confirmed by an ex-
amination of the caterpillar from the point
of view of sensibility. Whereas the small
game of the Silky Ammophila and the Sil-
very Ammophila struggle violently if the
needle touches them elsewhere than in the
ring stung by the Wasp, the big caterpillars
of the Sandy Ammophila and especially of
the Hairy Ammophila remain motionless, no
matter which segment we prick. With
them there are no contortions, no sudden
twists of the hinder parts; the steel point
produces no sign of a remnant of sensibility
beyond a faint quivering of the skin. The
power of moving and feeling is therefore
almost wholly abolished, as It needs must be
if the grub Is to feed In safety on this mon-
strous prey. Before placing it in the bur-
268

The Ammophilae

row, the Wasp has turned it into an inert
though still living mass.

I have been permitted to watch the Am-
mophila operating with her scalpel on the
sturdy caterpillar and never did the intuitive
science of instinct show me anything more
exciting. With a friend — soon, alas, to be
snatched from me by death! — I was coming
back from the plateau of Les Angles to lay
snares for the Sacred Beetle and put his
skill to the test, when we caught sight of a
Hairy Ammophila very busily employed at
the foot of a tuft of thyme. We at once
lay down on the ground, close to where she
was working. Our presence did not frighten
the Wasp; in fact, she came and settled on
my sleeve for a moment, decided that her
two visitors were harmless, since they did
not move, and returned to her tuft of thyme.
As an old stager, I knew what that daring
familiarity meant: the Wasp's attention was
occupied with a serious business. We would
wait and see.

The Ammophila scratched the ground at

the foot of the plant, at the junction of root

and stem, pulled up slender grass rootlets

and poked her head under the little clods

269

The Hunting Wasps

which she had lifted. She ran hurriedly
this way and that around the thyme, inspect-
ing every crevice that could give access to
what lay below. She was not digging her-
self a home but hunting some game hidden
underground; this was evident from her be-
haviour, which resembled that of a Dog
trying to dig a Rabbit out of his hole. Pre-
sently, excited by what was happening over-
head and close-pressed by the Ammophila,
a big Grey Worm made up his mind to leave
his lair and come up to the light of day.
That settled him: the huntress was on the
spot at once, gripping him by the skin of his
neck and holding tight in spite of his con-
tortions. Perched on the monster's back,
the Wasp bent her abdomen and deliberately,
without hurrying, like a surgeon thoroughly
acquainted with his patient's anatomy, drove
her lancet into the ventral surface of each
of the victim's segments, from the first to the
last. Not a ring was left without receiv-
ing a stab; all, whether with legs or without,
were dealt with in order, from front to back.
That is what I saw with all the leisure and
ease that an observation needs in order to
be above reproach. The Wasp acts with a
precision that would make science turn green
270

The Ammophilae

with envy; she knows what man hardly ever
knows; she knows her victim's complex ner-
vous system and reserves her successive
dagger-thrusts for the successive ganglia of
her caterpillar. I said, she knows; what I
should say Is, she behaves as though she
knew. Her act is simple inspiration. Ani-
mals obey their compelling instinct, without
realizing what they do. But whence comes
that sublime Inspiration? Can theories of
atavism, of natural selection, of the strug-
gle for life interpret it reasonably? To me
and my friend, this was and remained one
of the most eloquent revelations of the un-
utterable logic that rules the world and
guides the Ignorant by the laws of Its In-
spiration. Stirred to our Innermost being by
this flash of truth, both of us felt tears of
undefinable emotion spring to our eyes.

271

CHAPTER XIV

THE BEMBEX

ONE of my favourite spots for the ob-
servations which I will now describe is
not far from Avignon, on the right bank of
the Rhone, opposite the mouth of the Du-
rance. It is the Bois des Issarts. Let not
the reader mistake the value of this word
bois, which usually suggests a carpet of cool
moss and the shade of tall trees, with a dim
light filtering through the leaves. The
scorched plains where the Cicada grates out
his ditty on the pale olive-tree know none
of these delicious retreats filled with cool
shadow.

The Bois des Issarts is a coppice of holm-
oaks, no higher than one's head and spar-
ingly distributed in scanty clumps which, even
at their feet, hardly temper the force of the
sun's rays. When I used to settle myself
in some part of the coppice suitable for my
observations, on certain afternoons in the
dog-days of July and August, I had the shel-
ter of a large umbrella, which later, in the
272

The Bembex

most unexpected fashion, lent me a very pre-
cious aid of a different kind, as my story
will show in good time. If I neglected to
furnish myself with this embarrassing ad-
junct to a long walk, my only resource
against sunstroke was to lie down at full
length behind some sandy knoll; and, when
the veins in my temples were throbbing to
bursting point, my last hope lay in putting
my head down a Rabbit-burrow. Such are
one's means of keeping cool in the Bois des
Issarts.

The soil not occupied by those clumps of
woody vegetation is almost bare and con-
sists of fine, dry, very loose sand, which the
wind heaps Into little dunes wherever the
stems and roots of the holm-oak interfere
with its dissemination. The sides of these
sand-dunes are generally very smooth, be-
cause of the extreme lightness of the ma-
terials, which slide down into the smallest
depression and of their own accord restore
the evenness of the surface. You need but
push your finger Into the sand and take it
out again to bring about an immediate land-
slip which fills up the hole and restores
things to their original condition without
leaving a visible trace. But, at a certain
273

The Hunting Wasps

depth, which varies according to the more
or less recent date of the last rains, the sand
retains a lingering dampness which keeps it
In its place and gives it a consistency that
enables it to have small excavations made in
it without a subsequent collapse of walls and
roof. A blazing sun, a gloriously blue sky,
sandy slopes that yield without the least dif-
ficulty to the strokes of the Wasp's rake,
game galore for the grub's food, a peaceful
site hardly ever disturbed by the foot of
man : all the good things are combined in
this Bembex paradise. Let us watch the in-
dustrious insect at work.

If the reader will sit with me under the
umbrella or consent to share my Rabbit-bur-
row, this is the sight which he is invited to
behold, at the end of July: a Bembex {B.
rostrata) arrives suddenly, I know not
whence, and alights, without preliminary in-
vestigations or the least hesitation, at a spot
which to my eyes differs in no respect from
the rest of the sandy surface. With her
fore-tarsi, which are armed with rows of
stiff hairs and suggest at the same time a
broom, a brush and a rake, she works at
clearing her subterranean dwelling. The in-
sect stands on its four hind-legs, holding the
274

The Bembex

two at the back a httle wide apart, while the
front ones alternately scratch and sweep the
shifting sand. The precision and quick-
ness of the performance could not be greater
if the circular movement of the tarsi were
worked by a spring. The sand, shot back-
Wards under the abdomen, passes through
the arch of the hind-legs, gushes like a fluid
in a continuous stream, describes its para-
bola and falls to the ground some seven or
eight inches away. This spray of dust,
kept up evenly for five or ten minutes at a
time, is enough to show the dazzling rapid-
ity of the tools employed. I know no other
example of this swiftness, which neverthe-
less in no way detracts from the easy grace
and the free movement of the insect, as it
advances and retires first on this side, then
on that, without discontinuing its parabolic
streams of sand.

The soil excavated is of the lightest kind.
As the Wasp digs, the sand near by slips
back and fills the cavity. Amongst the rub-
bish that falls are tiny bits of wood, decayed
leaf-stalks and particles of grit larger than
the rest. The Bembex takes them up in her
mandibles and carries them away, moving
backwards as she goes; then she returns to
275

The Hunting Wasps

her sweeping, but never going to any depth
and making no attempt to bury herself un-
derground. What is her object in thus la-
bouring entirely on the surface? It would
be impossible to tell from this first glance;
but, after spending many days with my be-
loved Wasps and grouping together the scat-
tered facts resulting from my observations,
I seem to catch a glimpse of the reason for
the present proceedings.

The Wasp's nest is certainly there, a few
\ inches below the ground; in a little cell dug
in the cool, firm sand lies an egg, perhaps
a grub for which the mother caters from
day to day, bringing it Flies, the unvarying
food of the Bembex in their first state. The
mother has to be able at any moment to
enter the nest, as she flies up carrying in her
legs the nurseling's daily portion of game,
even as the bird of prey enters its eyrie with
the food for Its young in its talons. But,
while the bird returns to a home on some
inaccessible ledge of rock, with no dlflSculty
to overcome but that of the weight and en-
cumbrance of the captured prey, the Bembex
has each time to undertake rough miner's
work and open up anew a gallery blocked
and closed by the mere fact that the sand
276

The Bembex

gives way as the insect proceeds. In that
underground dweUing, the only room with
steady walls is the spacious cell where the
larva lives amid the remnants of Its fort-
night's feast; the narrow corridor which the
mother enters to reach the flat at the back
or to come out and go hunting collapses each
time, at least in the front part dug out of
very dry sand, which repeated exits and en-
trances make looser still. Each time there-
fore that the Wasp goes In or out, she has
to clear herself a passage through the debris.
Going out presents no difficulty, even
should the sand retain the consistency which
It might have at the start, when first dis-
turbed: the insect's movements are free, it
is safe under cover, it can take Its time and
use Its tarsi and mandibles without undue
hurry. Going in Is a very different matter.
The Bembex is hampered by her prey, which
her legs hold clasped to her body; and the
miner Is thus deprived of the free use of her
tools. And a still graver circumstance is
this: brazen parasites, veritable bandits In
ambush, crouch here and there in the neigh-
bourhood of the burrow, spying on the
mother Wasp as she makes her laborious en-
trance, so that they may rush In and lay
277

The Hunting Wasps

their egg on the piece of game at the very
moment when it is about to disappear down
the corridor. If they succeed, the Wasp's
nurseling, the son of the house, will perish,
starved by its gluttonous fellow-boarders.

The Bembex seems aware of these dan-
gers and makes arrangements for her en-
trance to be effected swiftly, without serious
obstacles, in short, for the sand blocking the
door to yield to a mere push of her head,
aided by a brisk sweep of her front tarsi.
With this object, the materials at the ap-
proaches to the home are subjected to a sort
of sifting. At leisure moments, under a
kindly sun, when the larva has its food and
does not need her attentions, the mother
rakes the ground in front of her door; she
removes little bits of wood, any extra-large
particles of gravel, any leaves that might get
in the way and bar her passage at the danger-
ous moment of her return. The Bembex
whom we have just seen so zealously em-
ployed was busy at this work of sifting: to
facilitate the access to her home, the materi-
als of the corridor have to be dug up, care-
fully sorted and rid of anything likely to
obstruct the road. Who indeed can tell
whether, by that nimble eagerness, that joy-
278

The Bembex

ous activity, the insect is not expressing In Its
own way its maternal satisfaction, its hap-
piness in watching over the roof of the cell to
which the precious egg has been entrusted?
As the Wasp is confining herself to her du-
ties outside the house, without trying to pen-
etrate into the sand, everything must be In
order inside and there Is no hurry about any-
thing. We should only wait in vain: the
Insect would tell us nothing more for the time
being. Let us therefore examine the under-
ground dwelling. If we scrape the dune
lightly with the blade of a knife at the point
where the Bembex was busiest, we soon dis-
cover the entrance-corridor, which, though
blocked for part of the way down. Is never-
theless recognizable by the distinctive ap-
pearance of the materials moved. This
passage, which is as wide as one's finger and
straight or winding, longer or shorter accord-
ing to the nature and the accidents of the
ground, measures eight to twelve inches. It
leads to a single chamber, hollowed in the
damp sand, whose walls are not coated with
any kind of mortar likely to prevent a subsi-
dence or to lend a polish to the rough surface.
The ceiling will do, If it can hold out while
the larva Is growing up; It does not matter
279

The Hunting Wasps

what falls in afterwards, when the larva is
enclosed in its stout cocoon, a sort of safe
which we shall see it building. The work-
manship of the cell, therefore, is very rustic:
the whole thing is reduced to a rough excava-
tion, of no definite shape, with a low roof and
space enough to contain two or three wal-
nuts.

In this retreat lies a piece of game, one
only, quite small and quite insufficient for the
greedy nurseling which it is meant to feed.
It is a golden-green Fly, a Green-bottle {Lii-
cilia Casar)^^ who lives on putrid flesh.
The Fly served up as food is absolutely mo-
tionless. Is she quite dead, or only para-
lysed? This question will be cleared up
later. For the moment, we will note the
presence, on the side of the game, of a cylin-
drical egg, white, very slightly curved and a
couple of millimetres ^ long. It is the egg of
the Bembex. As we expected from the
mother's behaviour, there is nothing urgent
indoors: the egg is laid and provided with a
first ration apportioned to the requirements
of the feeble grub which will hatch twenty-

iCf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, translated
by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. ix. — Trans-
lator's Note.

^About .08 inch. — Translator's Note.
280

The Bembex

four hours hence. The Bembex had no need
to reenter the underground passage for some
time and was confining herself to keeping a
good look-out all round, or perhaps to dig-
ging fresh burrows and continuing to lay her
eggs, one by one, each in a cell to itself.

This peculiarity of beginning the pro-
visioning with a single head of small game
is not confined to the Rostrate Bembex. All
the other species do the same thing. If we
open the cell of any Bembex shortly after the
egg is laid, we shall always find the tiny cyl-
inder glued to the side of a Fly, who consti-
tutes the entire provision; moreover, this in-
itial ration is invariably small, as though the
mother went in search of the tenderest mouth-
fuls for the feeble nurseling. Besides, an-
other reason, the abiding freshness of the
food, might easily prompt her to make this
choice. We will look into that later. This
first portion, always a scanty one, varies
greatly in nature, according to the frequency
of this or that kind of game in the neighbour-
hood of the nest. It is sometimes a Green-
bottle, sometimes a Stomoxys, or some small
Eristalis, sometimes a dainty Bee-fly clad in
black velvet; but the most usual dish is a slim-
bellied Sphaerophoria.
281

The Hunting Wasps

This general fact, to which there is no ex-
ception, of the victualling of the egg with a
single Fly, a ration infinitely too small for a
larva blessed with a voracious appetite, at
once puts us on the track of the most remark-
able habit of the Bembex. Wasps whose lar-
vae live on prey heap up in each cell the num-
ber of victims necessary for the rearing of
the grub; they lay the egg on one of the bod-
ies and close the dwelling, which they do not
enter again. From that moment, the larva
hatches and develops alone, having before it
from the very beginning the whole stock of
provisions which it is to consume. The Bem-
bex form an exception to this rule. The cell
is first stocked with a single head of game,
always small in size, and the egg is laid on
it. When that is done, the mother leaves
the burrow, which closes of itself; besides,
before going away, the insect is careful to
rake over the outside, so as to smooth the
surface and hide the entrance from any eye
but her own.

Two or three days elapse ; the egg hatches
and the little larva eats up the choice ration
served to it. Meanwhile the mother remains
in the neighbourhood and you see her some-
times feeding herself by sipping the sugary
282

The Bembex

exudations of the field erlngo, sometimes set-
tling happily on the burning sand, no doubt
watching the outside of the house. Every
now and again she sifts the sand at the en-
trance; then she flies away and disappears,
perhaps to dig other cells elsewhere and to
stock them in the same way. But, however
long she may stay away, she never forgets
the young larva so scantily provided for; the
instinct of a mother tells her the hour when
the grub has finished its food and is calling
for fresh nourishment. She therefore re-
turns to the nest, of which she is wonderfully
capable of discovering the invisible entrance;
she goes down into the earth, this time carry-
ing a bulkier piece of game. After depos-
iting her prey, she again leaves the house
and waits outside till the moment arrives to
serve a third course. This moment is not
slow in coming, for the larva devours its
food with a lusty appetite. Again the
mother appears with fresh provisions.

During nearly a fortnight, while the larva
is growing up, the meals thus follow in suc-
cession, one by one, as needed, and coming
closer together as the nurseling waxes big-
ger. Towards the end of the fortnight, it
takes all the mother's activity to satisfy the
283

The Hunting Wasps

appetite of the glutton, who crawls heavily
along, with his great lumbering belly, amid
the scorned leavings: rejected wings and legs
and horny abdominal segments. You see her
at every moment returning with a recent cap-
ture, at every moment setting out again upon
the chase. In short, the Bembex brings up
her family from day to day, without storing
up provisions in advance, just as the bird
does, which feeds its nestlings from hand to
mouth. Of the many proofs that are evi-
dence of this method of upbringing, a very
singular method for a Wasp who feeds her
offspring on prey, I have already mentioned
the presence of the egg in a cell containing no
provisions but one small Fly, never more.
And here is another one, which can be veri-
fied at any time.

Let us look into the burrow of a Wasp who
stocks her grubs' provisions in advance : if we
select the moment when the insect is going in
with its prey, we shall find in the cell a cer-
tain number of victims, the commencement of
a larder, but never at that time a grub, nor
even an egg, for this is not laid until the pro-
visions are quite complete. When the egg
is laid, the cell is closed and the mother does
not return to it. It is therefore only in bur-
284

The Bembex

rows where the mother's visits are no longer
necessary that we can find larvae side by side
with larger or smaller stacks of food. On
the other hand, let us inspect the home of a
Bembex at the moment when she is entering
with the fruits of her hunting. We are cer-
tain of finding in the cell a larva, big or little
as the case may be, among remnants of pro-
visions already consumed. The portion
which the mother is now bringing is therefore
intended to prolong a meal which has already
lasted several days and which is to continue
for some time further with the produce of
future hunting-expeditions. Should we be
fortunate enough to make this search towards
the end of the larva's infancy — an advan-
tage which I have enjoyed as often as I
wished to — we shall find, on a copious heap
of remnants, a large and portly grub, to
which the mother is still bringing fresh vic-
tuals. The Bembex does not cease her cater-
ing and does not leave the cell for good until
the larva, distended by a purply paste, re-
fuses its food and lies down, stuffed to re-
pletion, on the jumble of legs and wings of
the game which it has devoured.

Each time that the mother enters the bur-
row on returning from the chase, she brings
285

The Hunting Wasps

but a single Fly. If it were possible, by
counting the remnants contained in a cell
whose occupant is full-grown, to tell the num-
ber of victims supplied to the larva, we should
know how often at the least the Wasp vis-
ited her burrow after laying the egg. Un-
fortunately, these broken victuals, chewed
and chewed again at moments of scarcity,
are for the most part unrecognizable. But,
if we open a cell with a less forward nurse-
ling, the provisions lend themselves to exam-
ination, some of them being still whole or
nearly whole, while others, more numerous,
are represented by fragments in a state of
preservation that enables them to be identi-
fied. Incomplete though it be, the list ob-
tained under these conditions is surprising
and shows what activity the Wasp must dis-
play to satisfy the needs of such a table. I
will set forth one of the bills of fare which
I have observed.

At the end of September, around the larva
of a Jules' Bembex {Bembex Jiilii),^ which
has reached almost a third of the size which
it will finally attain, I find the following heads
of game: six Echinomyia riibescens (two

^For a description of this new species, see the Appen-
dix to the present volume. — Author's Note.

286

The Bembex

whole and four in pieces) ; four Syrphus co-
rolla (two complete, the other two broken
up) ; three Gonia atra (all three untouched:
one of them had that moment been brought
along by the mother, which led to my discov-
ering the burrow) ; two Pollenia rufescens
(one untouched, the other partly eaten) ; one
Bombylius (reduced to pulp) ; two Echino-
myia intermedia (in bits) ; and two Pollenia
floralis (likewise in bits) : twenty pieces in
all. This certainly makes a both plentiful
and varied bill of fare; but, as the larva was
only a third of its ultimate size, the complete
menu might easily number as many as sixty
items.

It is not at all difficult to verify this sump-
tuous figure: I will myself take the place of
the Bembex in her maternal functions and
supply the larva with food till it is ready to
burst. I move the cell into a little cardboard
box which I furnish with a layer of sand. I
place the larva on this bed, with all due con-
sideration for its dehcate skin. Around it,
without omitting a single fragment, I ar-
range the provisions with which it was sup-
plied. Then I go home, still holding the box
in my hand, to avoid any shaking which
might turn the house upside down and en-
287

The Hunting Wasps

danger my charge during a walk of several
miles. Any one who had met me on the
dusty Nimes Road, dropping with fatigue
and religiously carrying in my hand, as the
sole fruit of my laborious trip, an ugly grub
battening on a heap of Flies, would certainly
have smiled at my simplicity.

The journey was effected without damage:
when I reached home, the larva was placidly
eating its Flies as though nothing had hap-
pened. On the third day of captivity, the
provisions taken from the burrow were fin-
ished; the grub was rummaging with its
pointed mouth among the heap of remains
without finding anything to suit it; the dry
particles taken hold of, all horny, juiceless
bits, were rejected with disgust. The mo-
ment has come for me to continue the food
supply. The first Flies within reach shall
form my prisoner's diet. I kill them by
pressing them in my fingers, but without
crushing them. The first ration consists of
three EristaUs tenax and one Sarcophaga.^
This is all gobbled up in twenty-four hours.
Next day, I provide two Eristales, or Drone-
flies, and four House-flies. It was enough

iQr Flesh-fly. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chap, x.—
Translator's Note.

288

The Bembex

for the day, but left nothing over. I went
on like this for eight days, giving the grub a
larger portion every morning. On the ninth
day, the larva refused all food and began to
spin its cocoon. The full record of this
eight days' feast amounts to sixty-two pieces,
composed mainly of Drone-flies and House-
flies, which, added to the twenty items found
whole or in pieces in the cell brings up the
total to eighty-two.

It is possible that I did not rear my larva
with the wholesome frugality and the wise
economy which the mother would have
shown; there was perhaps some waste in the
daily provisions served all at one time and
left entirely to the grub's discretion. In
some respects I feel inclined to believe that
things do not happen just like that in the ma-
ternal cell, for my notes contain such details
as the following. In the alluvial sands of
the Durance, I discover a burrow which the
Wasp {Bembex ociilata) has just entered
with a Sarcophaga agricola. Inside, I find a
larva, numerous fragments and a few whole
Flies, namely, four Spharophoria scripta,
one Onesia viarum and two Sarcophaga
agricola, including the one which the Bembex
has just brought along before my eyes. Now
289

The Hunting Wasps

it is worthy of remark that half of this game,
namely, the Sphaerophoriae, is right at the end
of the cell, under the larva's very teeth,
whereas the other half is still in the passage,
on the threshold of the cell, and therefore
beyond the reach of the grub, which is unable
to change its position. It seems to me then
that, when game is plentiful, the mother lays
her captures on the threshold of the cell for
the time and forms a reserve on which she
draws as and when necessary, especially on
rainy days when all labour is at a stand-
still.

Thus practised with economy, the distribu-
tion of food would save a waste which I
was not able to prevent with my larva,
treated I daresay too sumptuously. I there-
fore lower the figure obtained and reduce it to
some sixty pieces, of middling size, between
that of the House-fly and of the Eristalis
tenax. This would about represent the num-
ber of Flies supplied by the mother to the
larva when the prey is of a moderate size, as
is the case with all the Bembex of my dis-
trict except the Rostrate Bembex {B. ros-
trata) and the Two-pronged Bembex {B. hi-
dent at a) ^ who have a preference for Gad-
flies. With them, the number of victims
290

The Bembex

would be from one to two dozen, according
to the size of the Fly, which varies greatly
in the different species of Gad-flies.

To avoid reopening this question of the
nature of the provisions, I will here give a
list of the Flies observed in the burrows of
the six species of Bembex that form the sub-
ject of this essay.

1. Bembex olivacea, Rossi. I only once
saw this species, at Cavaillon, feeding on
Greenbottles. The five other species are
common in the Avignon neighbourhood.

2. Bembex oculata, JuR. The Fly carry-
ing the egg is most often a Sphaerophoria,
especially S. scripta; sometimes it is a Geron
gibbosus. The later provisions include Sto-
moxys calcitrans, Pollenia ruficollis, P. rudis,
Pipiza nigripes, Syrphus corolla, Onesia vi-
arum, Calliphora vomitoria,^ Echinomyia in-
termedia, Sarcophaga agricola and Musca
domestica.^ The usual fare consists of
Stomoxys calcitrans, of which I have many a
time found fifty or sixty in a single burrow.

3. Bembex tarsata, Lat. This one also
lays her egg on Spharophoria scripta. She
next hunts: Anthrax flava, Bombylius nitidu-

iThe Bluebottle. — Translator's Note.
2The Common House-fly. — Translator's Note.
291

The Hunting Wasps

his, Eristalis o'neus, E. septdchralis, Merodon
spinipes, Syrphus corolla, Helophiltis trivit-
tatus and Zodion notatiim. Her favourite
game consists of Bombylii, or Bee-flies, and
Anthrax-flies.^

4. Bembex Julii (sp. nov.). The egg is
laid on a Sphserophoria or on a Pollenia
floralis. The provisions are a hotchpotch of
Syrphus corolla, Ech'inoinyia rubescens, E.
intermedia, Gonia atra, Pollenia floralis, P.
ruficollis, Clytia pelliicens, Liicilia Casar,
Dexia rustica and Bombylius.

5. Bembex rostrata. Fab. This is pre-
eminently a consumer of Gad-flies. She lays
her egg on a Syrphus corolla or a Lucilia
Casar, after which she feeds her larva ex-
clusively on big game belonging to the various
species of the genus Tabanus.

6. Bembex bidentata, V. L. Another ar-
dent huntress of Gad-flies. I have never
seen her pursue other game and I do not
know on what Fly the egg is laid.

This great variety of provisions shows
that the Bembex have no exclusive tastes and
fall upon any species of Flies, indifferently,
which the hazards of the chase place within

^Cf. The Life of the Fly: chaps, ii and iv. — Trans-
lator's Note.

292

The Bembex

their reach. They seem nevertheless to en-
tertain a few preferences. Thus one species
feeds more particularly on Bee-flies, a second
on Stomoxys-flies, a third and a fourth on
Gad-flies.

293

CHAPTER XV

THE FLY-HUNT

A FTER our list, in the last chapter, of the
-^^ fare on which the Bembex feed in the
larval form, it behoves us to seek the motive
that induces these Wasps to adopt a method
of victualling so exceptional among the dig-
ger-insects. Why, instead of previously stor-
ing a sufficient quantity of provisions on
which the egg could be laid — which would
enable the mother to close the cell immedi-
ately afterwards and never to return to it —
why, I ask, does she tie herself down for a
fortnight to this incessant, toilsome coming
and going from the burrow to the fields and
from the fields to the burrow, forcing her way
each time through the unstable sand, either
to go hunting or to bring the larva her latest
capture? It is, first and foremost, a ques-
tion of having fresh victuals for her larvae :
an all-important question, for the grub abso-
lutely refuses any high or tainted game. Like
the grubs of the other Diggers, it wants fresh
meat and nothing but fresh meat.

We have seen in the case of the Cerceres,
294

The Fly-hunt

the Sphex and the Ammophilae how the
mother solves the problem of preserved food-
stuffs, the problem of stocking a cell with the
requisite quantity of game for its future oc-
cupants and keeping the meat fresh for whole
weeks at a time; indeed, it is something more
than fresh, for the victims are kept in an al-
most living state, except that they are incapa-
ble of movement, an essential condition if
the grub is to feed on them in safety. The
miracle is performed by the most cunning
methods known to physiology. The poi-
soned lancet is driven into the nerve-centres
once or oftener, according to the structure of
the nervous system. Thus operated upon,
the victim retains all the attributes of life,
short of the power of moving.

Let us see if the Bembex make use of this
profound science of slaughter. The Flies
taken from between the legs of the kidnapper
as she enters her burrow present, in most
cases, every appearance of death. They are
motionless; occasionally we can detect in a
few of them some faint convulsions of the
tarsi, the last vestiges of a life that is passing
away. The same appearance of complete
death is usually found in the insects which
are not actually killed but paralysed by the
295

The Hunting Wasps

adroit dagger-thrust of a Cerceris or a
Sphex. The question whether they are alive
or dead can therefore be decided only ac-
cording to the manner in which the victims
keep fresh.

Placed in little screws of paper or in glass
tubes, the Crickets and Grasshoppers of the
Sphex, the caterpillars of the Ammophilae
and the Beetles and Weevils of the Cer-
ceres preserve their flexibility of limb, their
freshness of colouring and the normal condi-
tion of their intestines for weeks and months.
They are not corpses but bodies sunk in a
lethargy from which there is no awaking.
The Flies of the Bembex behave quite differ-
ently. The Eristales, the Syrphi — in short
all those whose livery is at all brightly-col-
oured — soon lose the brilliancy of their at-
tire. The eyes of certain Gad-flies, magnifi-
cently gilded, with three purple bands, very
quickly grow pale and dim, like the eyes of a
dying man. All these Flies, large and small,
when placed in little paper bags through which
the air circulates freely, dry up in two or
three days and become brittle; all, when pre-
served against evaporation in glass tubes in
which the air is stationary, go mouldy and
decay. They are dead, therefore, really and
296

The Fly-hunt

truly dead, when the Wasp brings them to
her larva. Should some of them still retain
a remnant of life, a few days or even hours
put an end to their agony. Consequently, for
lack of talent in the use of her dagger or for
some other reason, the murderess kills her
victims outright.

In view of this fact, that the prey is quite
dead at the moment when it is carried off, who
would not admire the logic of the Bembex'
procedure? How methodical and consistent
everything is in the actions of the cunning
Wasp ! As the provisions cannot keep be-
yond two or three days without going bad,
they must not be stored entire in the first
stages of an infancy which will last at least a
fortnight; and the hunting and distribution
must necessarily be done day by day, bit by
bit, as the larva grows up. The first ration,
the one that receives the egg, will last longer
than the others; the budding grub will take
several days to eat its flesh. It must there-
fore be small, otherwise the joint would be-
gin to putrify before it was all finished. This
joint therefore will not be a bulky Gad-fly or
a corpulent Bombylius, but rather a tiny
Sphasrophoria, or something similar, making
a dainty meal for a larva which is still so
297

The Hunting Wasps

delicate. Later, getting bigger and bigger
in time, will come the larger joints of veni-
son.

The burrow must be kept shut during the
mother's absence, to save the larva from re-
grettable intrusions; nevertheless the en-
trance must be one that can be opened very
frequently and hurriedly, without much dif-
ficulty, when the Wasp returns laden with her
prey and watched by the sharp eyes of daring
parasites. These conditions could not be
obtained with a compact soil such as that in
which the Digger-wasps usually make their
abodes: the door, left to itself, would stay
open; and so, each time, there would be the
long and toilsome job of either blocking up
the entrance with earth and gravel or un-
blocking it, as the case might be. The house
therefore must be dug in ground with a very
loose surface, in fine dry sand, which will at
once yield to the slightest effort on the
mother's part and, as it slides down, will
close the door of its own accord, like a curtain
which, when you thrust it aside with your
hand, lets you pass through and then falls
back again. There you have the series of
actions as deduced by man's reason and as
practised by the Wasp's sagacity.
298

The Fly-hunt

Why does the spoiler kill the captured prey
instead of simply paralysing It? Is It for
want of skill in the use of her sting? Is It
because of some difficulty due to the structure
of the Flies or to the methods employed In the
chase? I must begin by confessing that I
have failed In my attempts to place Flies,
without killing them, In that state of complete
immobility to which it Is so easy to reduce a
Buprestis, a Weevil or a Scarab by Injecting
a tiny drop of ammonia with a needle into
the thoracic ganglia. In making the experi-
ment, it is difficult to render the Insect mo-
tionless; and, by the time that it has ceased
to move, death has actually occurred, as Is
proved by its speedy corruption or desiccation.
But I have too much confidence in the re-
sources of instinct and have witnessed the in-
genious solution of too many problems to be-
lieve that a difficulty which baffles the experi-
menter can bring the insect to a standstill.
Therefore, without throwing doubt upon the
Bembex' talents as a slaughterer, I should
be inclined to look for other reasons.

Perhaps the Fly, so thinly covered, so de-
void of any plumpness, in a word, so lean,
could not. If paralysed by the sting, resist
evaporation long enough and would shrivel
299

The Hunting Wasps

up during the two or three weeks of waiting.
Consider the puny Sphaerophoria, the larva's
first mouthful. How much liquid has that
body to satisfy the needs of evaporation?
An infinitesimal drop, a mere nothing. The
abdomen ic a thin strip; its two sides touch.
Can such game as this form the basis of pre-
served food, seeing that evaporation would
dry up its juices in a few hours when these
are not renewed by nutrition? It is doubt-
ful, to say the least.

Let us examine the method of hunting, so
as to throw some final light on the subject. In
the quarry removed from between the legs of
the Bembex, it is not rare to observe signs
of a hurried capture, made anyhow, accord-
ing to the chances of a rough-and-tumble
fight. The Fly sometimes has her head
turned the wrong way round, as though the
spoiler had wrung her neck; her wings are
crushed; her fur, when she possesses any, is
ruffled. I have seen some that had their bel-
lies ripped open by their assailant's mandi-
bles and had lost their legs in the battle. As
a rule, however, the victim is intact.

No matter: considering the nature of the
game, endowed with good wings for flying,
300

The Fly-hunt

the capture must take place with a sudden-
ness that makes It hardly possible, I should
say, to obtain paralysis unaccompanied by
death. A Cercerls face to face with her
clumsy Weevil, a Sphex grappling with the
fat Cricket or the portly Ephlppiger, an Am-
mophila holding her caterpillar by the skin
of its neck, all three have an advantage over
a prey which is too slow In Its movements to
avoid attack. They can take their time, se-
lect at their ease the mathematical spot where
the sting Is to penetrate and lastly go to work
with the precision of an anatomist probing
with his scalpel the patient who lies before
him on the operating-table. But with the
Bembex it Is a very different matter: at the
least alarm, the game nimbly makes off; and,
once on the wing, it can defy its pursuer.
The Wasp has to pounce upon her prey una-
wares, without considering how she shall at-
tack or calculating her blows, just as the Gos-
hawk does when hunting in the fallows.
Mandibles, claws, sting, every weapon must
be employed simultaneously in the fierce fray
so as to put an end as early as possible to a
contest In which the least hesitation would
give the victim time to escape. If these con-
301

The Hunting Wasps

jectures are borne out by the facts, the Bem-
bex' prize can be nothing but a corpse or at
most a mortally wounded prey.

Well, my conjectures are correct: the Bem-
bex delivers her attack with a dash which
would do credit to a bird of prey. To sur-
prise the Wasp hunting is not an easy thmg;
were we never so well armed with patience,
we should watch in vain in the neighbourhood
of the burrow: the favourable opportunity
would not present itself, for the insect flies
far away and there is no possibility of follow-
ing it in its rapid evolutions. Its tactics
would doubtless be unknown to me but for
the assistance of a utensil from which I would
certainly never have expected such a service.
I am speaking of my umbrella, which I used
as a protection against the sun in the sand of
the Bois des Issarts.

I was not the only one to profit by its shade ;
I was generally surrounded by numerous com-
panions. Gad-flies of various species would
take refuge under the silken dome and sit
peacefully on every part of the tightly-
stretched cover. I was rarely without their
society when the heat became overpowering.
To while away the hours when I had nothing
to do, it amused me to watch their great gold
302

The Fly-hunt

eyes, which shone hke carbuncles under my
canopy; I loved to follow their solemn pro-
gress when some part of the ceiling became
too hot and obliged them to move a little
way on.

One day, bang! The tight cover re-
sounded like the skin of a drum. Perhaps
an oak had dropped an acorn on the um-
brella. Presently, one after the other, bang,
bang, bang! Can some practical joker have
come to disturb my solitude and fling acorns
or little pebbles at my umbrella ? I leave my
tent and inspect the neighbourhood: nothing!
The same sharp sound is repeated. I look
up at the ceiling and the mystery is explained.
The Bembex of the vicinity, who all consume
Gad-flies, had discovered the rich provender
that was keeping me company and were im-
pudently penetrating my shelter to seize the
Flies on the ceiling. Things were going to
perfection: I had only to sit still and look.

Every moment, a Bembex would enter,
swift as lightning, and dart up to the silken
ceiling, which resounded with a sharp thud.
Some rumpus was going on aloft, where the
eye could no longer distinguish between at-
tacker and attacked, so lively was the fray.
The struggle did not last for an appreciable
303

The Hunting Wasps

time: the Wasp would retire forthwith with
a victim between her legs. The dull herd
of Gad-flies, at this sudden irruption which
slaughtered them one after the other, drew
back a little all round, without quitting the
treacherous shelter. It was so hot outside I
Why get excited?

Obviously, this suddenness of attack, fol-
lowed by the swift removal of the prey, does
not allow the Bembex to regulate her dagger-
play. The sting no doubt performs its of-
fice, but it is directed without precision at
those spots which the hazards of the fight
place within its reach. I have seen Bem-
bex, to finish off their half-killed Gad-flies
still struggling in the assassin's grasp, munch
the head and thorax of the victims. This
habit in itself proves that the Wasp wants a
genuine corpse and not a paralysed prey, since
she ends the Fly's agony with so little cere-
mony. All things considered, therefore, I
think that, on the one hand, the nature of the
prey, which dries up so quickly, and, on the
other hand, the difficulty of making such
rapid attacks explain why the Bembex serve
up dead prey to their larvae and consequently
cater for them from day to day.

Let us watch the Wasp as she returns to the
304

The Fly-hunt

burrow with her capture held under her ab-
domen between her legs. Here comes one,
the Tarsal Bembex {B. tarsatci), who ar-
rives laden with a Bee-fly. The nest is sit-
uated at the sandy foot of a steep bank. The
huntress announces her approach by a shrill
humming, which has something plaintive
about it and which continues until the insect
sets foot to earth. We see the Bembex hover
above the bank and then dip straight down,
very slowly and cautiously, all the time emit-
ting her shrill hum. Should her keen eye
descry anything unusual, she slackens her
descent, hovers for a second or two, goes up
again, comes down again and flies away, swift
as an arrow. After a few moments, here
she is once more. Hovering at a certain
height, she appears to be inspecting the lo-
cality, as if from the top of an observatory.
The vertical descent is resumed with the most
cautious slowness; finally, the Wasp alights
with no hesitation w^iatever at a spot which
to my eye has naught to distinguish it from
the rest of the sandy surface. At that in-
stant, the plaintive whimper ceases.

The insect, no doubt, has landed more oi
less on chance, since the most practised eye
cannot distinguish one spot from the other
305

The Hunting Wasps

on that expanse of sand; it has alighted some-
where near its home, of which it will now
seek the entrance, concealed after Its last exit
not only by the natural falling-in of the ma-
terials but also by the Wasp's own careful
sweeping? But no: the Bembex does not
hesitate at all, does not grope about, does
not seek. By common consent, the antennae
are looked upon as organs for guiding insects
in their searches. At this moment of the
return to the nest, I see nothing particular In
the play of the antennas. Without once let-
ting go her prey, the Bembex scratches a lit-
tle in front of her, at the very spot where she
has alighted, gives a push with her head and
straightway enters, with the Fly under her
abdomen. The sand falls in, the door closes
and the Wasp is at home.

It makes no difference that I have seen the
Bembex return to her nest hundreds of
times; It Is always with fresh astonishment
that I behold the keen-sighted Insect find
without hesitation a door whose presence
there Is nothing to indicate. This door, in
fact, Is hidden with jealous care, not now,
after the Bembex has gone In — for the ob-
literating sand does not become quite level
of its own weight, but leaves perhaps a slight
306

The Fly-hunt

depression, or an Incompletely blocked porch
— but certainly after she comes out, for, when
starting on an expedition, she never fails to
put a finishing touch to the result of the na-
tural landslip. Wait for her departure and
you shall see her, before flying off, sweep the
front of her door and level it with scrupulous
care. When she is gone, I defy the most
penetrating eye to find the entrance. To dis-
cover It again, when the sandy expanse was of
any size, I had to resort to a kind of trlan-
gulatlon; and how often, after a few hours'
absence, did not my combinations of trian-
gles and my efforts of memory prove to be
at fault! All that remained was the stake,
a grass-stalk planted on the threshold; and
even this method was not always effective,
for the insect, with its passion for continually
improving the outside of the nest, often made
the bit of straw disappear from sight.

307

CHAPTER XVI

A PARASITE OF THE BEMBEX. THE COCOON

I HAVE shown the Bembex hovering
-■■ with her cumbrous prize above the
nest and then dropping vertically and very
slowly: a hesitating descent accompanied by
a sort of plaintive hum. This cautious ar-
rival might suggest that the insect is exam-
ining the ground from above in order to find,
its door and trying to recall the locality be-
fore alighting. But another motive is at
work, as I propose to demonstrate. Under
ordinary conditions, when no sign of danger
is apparent, the Wasp comes suddenly, at full
tilt, without any hovering, hesitating or whim-
pering, and settles at once on her threshold
or very near it. Her memory is so faithful
that she has no need to search about. Let
us then look into the cause of that hesitating
approach which I described in the last chap-
ter.

The W^asp hovers, descends slowly, ascends
again, flies away and returns, because the
nest is threatened by a very grave danger.

A Parasite of the Bembex

Her plaintive hum denotes anxiety: she never
emits it when there is no peril. But who is
the enemy? Can it be I, sitting here and
watching? Why, no: I am nothing to her,
nothing but a shapeless mass unworthy of her
attention. The formidable enemy, the fear-
some foe that must be avoided at all costs, is
there, sitting motionless on the sand, near the
house. It is a miserable little Fly, feeble
and inoffensive in appearance. This insig-
nificant Gnat is the terror of the Bembex.
The scourge of the Fly-tribe, the fierce slayer
who so swiftly wrings the necks of colossal
Gad-flies sated with blood from an Ox's back,
does not enter her own residence because she
sees herself watched by another Fly, a regu-
lar pigmy, who would make scarcely a mouth-
ful for her larvae.

Why does she not pounce upon her and get
rid of the little wretch? The Wasp is quick
enough on the wing to catch her; and, small
though the capture be, the larvae; will not
scorn it, since any sort of Fly suits them.
But no: the Bembex flees from a foe whom
she could cut to bits with a single stroke of
her mandibles; it is to me as though I saw my
Cat fleeing in terror from a Mouse. The
ardent huntress of Flies is hunted by a Fly
309

The Hunting Wasps

and a small one at that. I bow before the
facts without hoping ever to understand this
inversion of the parts played by each insect.
To be able to rid yourself easily of a mortal
enemy who is contemplating the ruin of your
family and who would furnish a nice little
meal for it, to be able to do that and not do it
when the enemy is there, within reach of you,
watching you, defying you : this is the height
of animal aberration. But aberration is not
the right word; let us rather speak of the
harmony of created things, for, since this
wretched little Fly has her tiny part to play
in the general order, the Bembex must needs
respect her and like a craven flee before her,
else there would long since have been none
of her left in the world.

Let us now tell the history of this parasite.
Among the nests of the Bembex, we find very
frequently some that are occupied at the same
time by the larva of the Wasp and by other
larvae, strangers to the family and gluttonous
companions of the first. These strangers
are smaller than the Bembex' nurseling, tear-
shaped and of a purplish colour, due to the
tint of the baby-food that shows through the
transparent body. They vary in number:
there are sometimes half-a-dozen of them,
310

A Parasite of the Bembex

sometimes ten or more. They belong to a
species of Fly, as is evident from their shape
and also confirmed by the pupae which we find
in their place. Home-breeding completes
the proof. When reared in boxes, on a layer
of sand, with Flies renewed from day to day,
they turn into pupae from which, a ye.ar later,
there issues a small Fly, a Tachina of the
genus known as Miltogramma.

It is the same Fly that caused the Bembex
such lively fears by lying in ambush near the
burrow. The Wasp's terror is but too well
founded. This is what happens inside the
dwelling: around the heap of food which the
mother exhausts herself in keeping up to the
requisite quantity, seated in company with the
lawful offspring are from six to ten hungry
guests, who dip their sharp-pointed mouths
into the common dish with no more restraint
than if they were at home. Harmony seems
to prevail at the table. I have never seen
the lawful larva grow indignant at the indis-
cretion of the alien grubs, nor have I seen
these appear to wish to interfere with the
other's repast. All help themselves indis-
criminately and eat away peaceably without
seeking a quarrel with their neighbours.

So far all would be well, if a serious difE-
311

The Hunting Wasps

culty did not now arise. However active
the mother-nurse may be, she Is obviously
not equal to such an output. She had to be
constantly hunting to feed one larva, her own;
how could she possibly manage to provide
for a dozen greedy mouths? The result of
this enormous increase of family can only
be want, or even starvation, not for the Fly's
maggots, which, developing more quickly
than the Bembex' larva, get ahead of it and
profit by the days when there is still plenty
for everybody, as their host is too young to
need much, but certainly for that unfortunate
host, who arrives at the transformation-
period without being able to mals;e up for lost
time. Besides, even if the first visitors, in
becoming pupae, leave him the free run of
the table, others appear upon the scene, so
long as the mother continues to come to the
nest, and complete his starvation.

In burrows invaded by numerous parasites,
the Bembex' larva is in point of fact much
smaller than one would suppose from the
heap of food consumed, the remains of which
encumber the cell. Limp, emaciated, re-
duced to a half or a third of its normal size.
It vainly tries to weave a cocoon for which it
does not possess the silk; and it perishes in a
312

A Parasite of the Bembex

corner of the house among the pupae of its
more fortunate companions. Its end may be
more cruel still. Should the provisions fail,
should the mother-nurse delay too long in re-
turning with food, the Flies devour the larva
of the Bembex. I verified this black deed by
rearing the brood myself. All went well so
long as there was plenty to eat; but, if the
daily portion was omitted by accident or de-
sign, next day or the day after I was sure to
find the Fly's grubs greedily slicing up the
larva of the Bembex. So, when the nest is
invaded by the parasites, the lawful larva is
doomed to perish, either by hunger or by a
violent death; and this is what makes the
Bembex hate the sight of the Miltogrammae
prowling around her home.

The Bembex are not the only victims of
these parasites : all the Digger-wasps without
distinction have their burrows plundered by
Tachinae and especially Miltogrammae. Dif-
ferent observers, notably Lepeletier de Saint-
Fargeau, have spoken of the wiles of these
bold-faced Flies; but none of them, so far as
I know, has remarked this very curious In-
stance of parasitism at the expense of the
Bembex. I say very curious, because the
conditions are quite different. The nests of
313

The Hunting Wasps

the other Digger-wasps are stocked before-
hand and the Miltogramma drops her eggs
on the pieces of game as they are taken in.
When the Wasp has finished her catering and
laid her egg, she .closes the cell, where hence-
forth the lawful larva and the alien larvae
hatch and live together without ever being
visited in their solitude. The mother there-
fore is not aware of the parasites' brigand-
age, which remains unpunished because It is
unknown.

With the Bembex, it is quite another mat-
ter. The mother is constantly returning in-
doors during the fortnight which It takes to
rear her grubs; she knows that her offspring
is living in the company of a number of in-
truders, who appropriate the best part of the
food; each time that she brings provisions
to her larva, she touches and feels at the
bottom of the cavity those hungry guests
who, far from contenting themselves with
the remnants, seize upon the pick of the
victuals; she must perceive, however limited
her arithmetical faculties, that twelve are
more than one; besides, the consumption of
food, which Is out of all proportion to her
hunting-powers, would tell her; and yet, In-
stead of taking those presumptuous aliens by
314

A Parasite of the Bembex

the skin of the belly and chucking them out
of doors, she placidly tolerates them.

Tolerates them, did I say? Why, she
feeds them, she brings them provisions, hav-
ing perhaps for those intruders the same af-
fection as for her own larva! It is a new
version of the story of the Cuckoo, but with
even more singular circumstances.^ The
theory that the Cuckoo, almost the size of
the Sparrow-hawk and wearing the same
dress, inspires enough respect to enable him
to introduce his egg with impunity into the
feeble Warbler's nest and that the latter,
in her turn, perhaps overawed by the fear-
some appearance of her Toad-faced nurse-
ling, accepts and looks after the stranger:
this theory has some plausibility. But what
should we say if the Warbler turned para-
site and, with superb audacity, went and con-
fided her eggs to the eyrie of the bird of
prey, to the nest of the Sparrow-hawk him-
self, the bloodthirsty devourer of War-
blers? What should we say if the rapacious
Hawk accepted the trust and fondly reared
the brood of little birds? And this is ex-
actly what the Bembex does, that ravisher of
FHes who tenderly nurses other Flies, that
huntress who provides food for a quarry
315

The Hunting Wasps

whose last meal will be made on her own
disembowelled larva ! I leave it to others,
cleverer than myself, to interpret these as-
tonishing relations.

Let us observe the tactics employed by
the Tachina for the purpose of confiding her
eggs to the Digger's nest. It is an absolute
rule that the Gnat never enters the burrow,
even though she should find it open and the
owner absent. The sly parasite would think
twice about venturing down a passage where,
being no longer free to escape, she might
pay dear for her brazen effrontery. For
her the one and only favourable moment
for her designs, a moment awaited with ex-
quisite patience, is that at which the Wasp
dives into the gallery, with her prey clasped
to her belly. At that instant, however short
it may be, when the Bembex or any other
Digger has half her body well within the
entrance and is about to disappear under-
ground, the Miltogramma dashes up and
settles on the piece of game that projects a
little way beyond the hinder extremity of the
ravisher; and, while the Bembex is delayed
by the difficulty of entering, the other, with
unparalleled swiftness, lays an egg on the
prey, or even two or three in quick succession.
316

A Parasite of the Bembex

The hesitation of the Wasp hampered by
her load lasts but the twinkling of an eye.
No matter: this is long enough for the Gnat
to accomplish her misdeed without allow-
ing herself to be carried beyond the thresh-
old. How smoothly her organs must work
to adapt themselves to this instantaneous lay-
ing! The Bembex disappears, herself in-
troducing the enemy to the home; and the
Tachina goes and squats in the sun, close
to the burrow, to meditate fresh deeds of
darkness. If we wish to make sure that the
Fly's eggs have really been laid during this
rapid manoeuvre, we need only open the bur-
row and follow the Bembex to the bottom
of her dwelling. The prey which we take
from her bears at the tip of its abdomen at
least one egg, sometimes more, according to
the length of the delay at the entrance.
These eggs are too small to belong to any
but a parasite; besides, if any doubt re-
mained, separate rearing in a box results in
Fly-grubs, followed by the pupae and lastly
the Miltogrammae themselves.

The moment adopted by the Gnat Is chosen
with great discrimination: it is the only mo-
ment when she is able to accomplish her de-
signs without danger and without useless
317

The Hunting Wasps

dodging about. The Wasp, half-trapped in
the entrance-hall, cannot see the foe so dar-
ingly perched on the hind-quarters of the
prey; if she suspects the parasite's presence,
she cannot drive her away, having no liberty
of movement in the narrow corridor; lastly,
in spite of all the precautions which she takes
to facilitate her entrance, she cannot always
vanish underground with the necessary speed,
the fact being that the bandit is much too
quick for her. This indeed is the auspicious
moment and the only one, since prudence for-
bids the Fly to penetrate into the cave where
other Flies, far stronger than herself, serve
as food for the grub. Outside, in the open
air, the difficulty is insurmountable, thanks
to the intense vigilance of the Bembex. Let
us turn for a minute to the arrival of the
mother while her home is being watched by
Miltogrammse,

A number of these Midges, greater or less
from time to time but usually three or four,
station themselves on the sand and remain
perfectly still, all gazing at the burrow, of
which they well know the entrance, carefully
hidden though it be. Their dull-brown col-
our, their great blood-red eyes, their inde-
fatigable patience have often suggested to
318

A Parasite of the Bembex

me a picture of brigands, clad in dark frieze,
with a red handkerchief round their heads,
waiting in ambush for the moment to strike a
felon blow. The Wasp arrives carrying her
prey. If nothing of an alarming nature
troubled her, she would then and there alight
at her door. But she hovers at a certain
height, comes down slowly and circum-
spectly, hesitates; and a plaintive whimper-
ing, resulting from a special vibration of her
wings, expresses her fears. She has seen
the malefactors therefore. They too have
seen the Bembex: they follow her with their
eyes, as the movement of their red heads
shows; every gaze is turned towards the
coveted booty. Now come the marches and
countermarches of craft striving to outwit
prudence.

The Bembex comes straight down, with
an imperceptible flight, as though letting her-
self drop inertly, buoyed up by the parachute
of her wings. She is now hovering a hand's
breadth above the ground. This is the mo-
ment. The Midges take flight and all make
for the rear of the Wasp ; they hover in her
wake, some nearer, some farther, in a geo-
metrical line. If the Bembex turns to
thwart their designs, they also turn, with a
319

The Hunting Wasps

precision that keeps them in the rear on the
same straight Hne; if she advances, they ad-
vance; if she retreats, they retreat, letting
the Wasp set their pace all the time, now
flying slowly, now coming to a stand-still,
according to the behaviour of their leader,
the Bembex. They make no attempt to
fling themselves on the object of their cupid-
ity; their tactics are confined to keeping
ready, in this rearguard position, which will
save them any hesitation at the critical mo-
ment.

Sometimes, wearying of this obstinate pur-
suit, the Bembex alights; the others instantly
settle on the sand, still in the rear, and do
not budge. The Wasp darts off again,
with a shriller whimpering, a sign no doubt
of increasing indignation; the Midges dart
after her. One last method remains of
throwing off the persistent Flies: dashing off
at full speed, the Bembex flies far away, ho-
ping perhaps to mislead the parasites by rapid
evolutions across country. But the wary
Gnats are not caught in the trap: they let her
go and once more take up their positions on
the sand around the burrow. When the
Bembex returns, the same pursuit will begin
all over again, until at last the parasites' ob-
320

A Parasite of the Bembex

stinacy has worn down the mother's prudence.
In that second when her vigilance Is relaxed,
the Files are straightway there. One of
them, occupying the most favourable spot,
swoops upon the disappearing prey and the
deed Is done : the egg is laid.

There is ample evidence that the Bembex
is aware of the danger. The Wasp knows
how disastrous the presence of the hateful
Gnat may be to the future of the nest; on
this point her prolonged attempts to put off
the Tachinae, her hesitations, her flights leave
not the shadow of a doubt. Then how is It,
I ask myself once more, that the Fly-huntress
allows herself to be worried by another of
the tribe, by an infinitesimal bandit, incapable
of the least resistance, whom she could reach
with a sudden rush if she tried? Why not
reheve herself of the prey that clogs her
movements and swoop down upon those evil-
doers? What would be needed to extermi-
nate the ill-omened brood that hangs around
the burrow? A battue that would take her
a few seconds. But the harmony of the uni-
verse, the laws that regulate the preserva-
tion of species willnot have it so; and the
Bembex will always allow themselves to be
harassed without ever learning from the
321

The Hunting Wasps

famous " struggle for life " the radical
method of extermination. I have seen them
sometimes, when too close-pressed by the
Midges, drop their prey and fly away in mad
haste, but without any hostile demonstration,
though the putting down of the burden left
them quite free in their movements. The
abandoned prey, but now so ardently coveted
by the Tachinae, lay on the ground, for all to
do as they pleased with; and not one of them
took any notice of it. This game lying in
the open air had no value for the Midges,
whose larvae require the shelter of a burrow.
It was valueless also to the suspicious Bem-
bex, who, on returning, felt it for a moment
and left it with scorn. A momentary break
in her vigilance had made her doubtful of
it.

We will end this chapter with the story
of the larva. Its monotonous life offers no-
thing remarkable In the fortnight during
which It eats and grows. Next comes the
construction of the cocoon. The meagre de-
velopment of the silk-producing organs does
not allow the grub a dwelling of pure silk,
composed, like those of the Ammophllae and
the Sphex, of several wrappers, one outside
the other, which protect the larva and after-
322

The Cocoon

wards the nymph against the Inroads of
damp in a shallow and exposed burrow when
the rains of autumn come and the snows of
winter. Nevertheless, the Bembex' burrow
is in a worse plight than that of the Sphex,
being situated at a depth of a few inches in
easily saturated soil. Therefore, in order
to construct itself an adequate shelter, the
larva makes up by its industry for its small
quantity of silk. With grains of sand art-
istically put together and cemented with the
silky material it builds itself an exceedingly
solid cocoon, impenetrable to damp.

Three general methods are employed by
the Digger-wasps in constructing the sanctum
in which the metamorphosis is to take place.
Some dig their burrows at great depths, un-
der shelter: their cocoon then consists of a
single envelope, so thin as to be transparent.
This is the case with the Philanthi and the
Cerceres. Others are content with a shallow
burrow in open ground; but in that case they
sometimes have enough silk to increase the
number of wrappers for the cocoon, as we
see with the Sphex, the Ammophilae and the
ScolidB, or sometimes the quantity of silk
is insufficient, when they have recourse to
gummed sand, this being the method prac-
323

The Hunting Wasps

tised by the Bembex, the Stlzl and the Palarl.
A Bembex-cocoon is so compact and strong
that it might be taken for the kernel of some
seed. The form is cyHndrical, with one end
rounded and the other pointed. The length
is about three-quarters of an inch. On
the outside it is slightly wrinkled and rather
coarse to look at; but the inner walls are
glazed with a fine varnish.

My experiments in indoor breeding have
enabled me to observe every detail of the
construction of this architectural curiosity, a
regular strong-box inside which the inclemen-
cies of the weather can be braved in safety.
The larva first pushes away the remains of
its food and forces them into a corner of the
cell or compartment which I have arranged
for it in a box with paper partitions. Hav-
ing swept the floor, it fixes at the different
walls of its dwelling threads of a beautiful
white silk, forming a spidery web which
keeps off the cumbrous heap of broken
victuals and serves as a scaffolding for the
next work.

This work consists of a hammock slung
far from any dirt, in the centre of the
threads stretched from wall to wall. No-
thing but silk, magnificently fine, white silk,
324

The Cocoon

enters into its composition. Its shape is that
of a sack open at one end with a wide cir-
cular mouth, closed at the other and ending
in a point. An eel-trap would give a very
fair picture of it. The edges of the mouth
are kept apart and permanently stretched by
numerous threads starting from there and
fastened to the adjoining walls. Lastly, the
texture of this sack is extremely fine and al-
lows us to see all the grub's proceedings.

Things had been in this condition since the
day before, when I heard the larva scratching
in the box. I opened it and found my pris-
oner engaged in scraping the cardboard wall
with its mandibles, while its body was half
outside the sack. The cardboard had al-
ready suffered considerably and a heap of
tiny fragments were piled in front of the
opening of the hammock, to be used later.
For lack of other materials, the grub would
doubtless have employed these scrapings for
its building. I thought it better to provide
something in accordance with its tastes and
to give it sand. Never had Bembex-larva
built with such sumptuous materials. I
poured before the captive sand from my Ink-
stand: blotting-sand, blue sand sprinkled
with little gilt mica spangles.
325

The Hunting Wasps

This supply is placed in front of the mouth
of the bag. The bag itself is in a horizontal
position, which is convenient for the coming
task. The larva, leaning half out of the
hammock, picks up its sand almost grain by
grain, rummaging in the heap with its mandi-
bles. If any grain is found to be too bulky,
the grub takes it and throws it away. When
the sand is thus sorted, the larva introduces
a certain quantity into the silken edifice by
sweeping it with its mouth. This done, it
retires into the eel-trap and begins to spread
the materials in a uniform layer on the lower
surface of the sack; then it gums the different
grains and inlays them in the fabric, using
silk as cement. The upper surface is built
more slowly: the grains are carried up one
by one and fixed on with the silken putty.

This first layer of sand as yet embraces
only the front half of the cocoon, the half
that ends at the mouth of the bag. Before
turning round to work at the back half, the
grub renews its supply of materials and
takes certain precautions so as not to be hin-
dered in its mason's work. The sand out-
side, heaped up in front of the entrance,
might slip inside and embarrass the builder
in so narrow a space. The grub foresees
326

The Cocoon

this possibility : it glues a few grains together
and makes a rough curtain of sand, which
stops up the orifice very imperfectly, but
sufficiently to prevent an accident. Having
taken these precautions, the larva works at
the back half of the cocoon. From time to
time, it turns round to fetch fresh supplies
from outside, tearing a corner of the cur-
tain that protects it against the outer sand
and grabbing through this window the ma-
terials which it requires.

The cocoon is still incomplete, wide open
at the big end; It wants the spherical cap
that is to close it. For this final labour the
grub takes a plentiful supply of sand, the
last supply of all, and then pushes away the
heap outside the entrance. At the opening
it now weaves a silken cap, which fits the
mouth of the primitive eel-trap precisely.
Lastly, grains of sand, kept in reserve in-
side, are laid one by one upon this silken
foundation and glued together with silky
slime. Having finished this lid, the larva
has nothing else to do but give the last finish
to the inside of the abode and glaze the
walls with varnish to protect its delicate skin
against the rough sand.

The hammock of pure silk and the hemi-
327

The Hunting Wasps

sphere that closes It later are, as we see, but
a scaffolding intended to support the ma-
sonry of sand and give it a regular curve;
they might be compared with the wooden
moulds which builders set up when construct-
ing an arch, a vault. Once the work is done,
the timber frame is taken away and the
vault is sustained by virtue of its perfect ba-
lance. Even so, when the cocoon is finished,
the silken support disappears, partly lost in
the masonry, partly destroyed by contact
with the coarse earth; and not a trace re-
mains of the ingenious method followed in
welding together materials with so little con-
sistency as sand Into a building of such per-
fect regularity.

The round cap closing the mouth of the
original eel-trap is a work apart, adjusted to
the main body of the cocoon. However
well the two parts are fitted and soldered,
the solidity is not the same as the larva would
obtain if it built its whole dwelling continu-
ously. The circumference of the lid there-
fore has a circular line of least resistance.
But this Is not a fault of construction; on the
contrary, it is a fresh improvement. The in-
sect would find grave difficulty In issuing later
from Its strong-box, so stout are the walls.
328

The Cocoon

The line of junction, weaker than the others,
would seem to save it a good deal of effort,
for It Is mostly along this line that the cover
is removed when the Bembex emerges from
the ground in the perfect state.

I have called this cocoon a strong-box.
It is Indeed a very solid piece of work, both
from its shape and from the nature of its
materials. Landslips or subsidences cannot
alter its outline, for the strongest pressure of
one's fingers does not always succeed In
crushing it. Therefore it matters little to
the larva if the ceiling of its burrow, dug in
loose soil, should fall in sooner or later; it
does not care much if a passing foot should
press upon it under its thin covering of sand;
it has nothing to fear once it is enclosed in
its stout bulwark. Nor does damp endanger
it. I have kept Bembex-cocoons immersed
in water for a fortnight at a time without
afterwards discovering the least trace of
dampness inside them. Why have we no
such waterproofing for our dwellings!

Lastly, thanks to its graceful oval, this
cocoon seems rather the product of some
elaborate manufacture than that of a grub.
To any one unacquainted with the secret, the
cocoons which I had built with blotting-sand
329

The Hunting Wasps

might have been jewels of some unknown
workmanship, great beads studded with
golden spots on a lapis-lazuli ground, de-
stined to form the necklace of a Polynesian
belle.

330

CHAPTER XVII

THE RETURN TO THE NEST

^ I ''HE Ammophila sinking her well at a
•*■ late hour of the day leaves her work,
after closing the orifice with a stone lid, flits
away from flower to flower, goes to another
part of the country and yet next day is able
to come back with her caterpillar to the home
excavated on the day before, notwithstand-
ing the unfamiliar locality, which is often
quite new to her. The Bembex, laden with
game, alights with almost mathematical pre-
cision on the threshold of her door, which is
blocked with sand and indistinguishable from
the rest of the sandy expanse. Where my
sight and recollection are at fault, their eyes
and their memory possess a sureness that is
very nearly infallible. One would think that
insects had something more subtle than mere
remembrance, a kind of intuition for places
to which we have nothing similar, in short,
an indefinable faculty which I call memory,
failing any other expression to denote it.
331

The Hunting Wasps

There can be no name for the unknown. In
order to throw if possible a httle hght on
this detail of animal psychology, I made a
series of experiments which I will now de-
scribe.^

The first has for its subject the Great Cer-
ceris, who hunts Cleonus-weevils. About ten
o'clock in the morning, I catch twelve fe-
males, all belonging to the same colony and
at work on the same bank, busy digging bur-
rows or victualling them. Each prisoner is
placed separately in a little paper bag and
the whole lot put in a box. I walk about a
mile and a half from the site of the nests and
then release my Cerceres, first taking care,
so that I may know them later, to mark them
with a white dot in the middle of the thorax,
using a straw dipped in indelible paint.

The Wasps fly only a few yards away, in
every direction, one here, another there;
they settle on blades of grass, pass their fore-
tarsi over their eyes for a moment, as though
dazzled by the bright sunshine to which they
have suddenly been restored; then they take
flight, some sooner, some later, and all, with-
out hesitation, make straight for the south,

ipor other essays on the homing of insects, cf. The
Mason-bees: chaps, ii to vi. — Translator's Note.
332

The Return to the Nest

that is to say, for home. Five hours later, I
return to the common site of the nests. I am
hardly there when I see two of my Cerceres
with white dots worlcing at the burrows;
soon a third arrives from the fields, with a
Weevil between her legs; a fourth is not slow
in following. The recognition of four out
of twelve in less than fifteen minutes was
enough to convince me. I thought it unne-
cessary to wait any longer. What four could
do the others would do, if they had not al-
ready done it; and I was quite at liberty to
presume that the absent eight were out hunt-
ing or else hidden in their underground gal-
leries. Therefore, carried for a mile and a
half in a direction and by a road of which
they could not have taken cognizance in their
paper prisons, the Cerceres, or at least some
of them, had returned home.

I do not know how far the Cerceres' hunt-
ing-grounds extend; and it is possible that
they know the country more or less over a
radius of a mile and a half. In that case,
they would not have felt sufficiently lost at
the spot to which I moved them and they
would have got home by their acquired local
knowledge. The experiment had to be re-
peated, at a greater distance and from a
333

The Hunting Wasps

starting-point which the Wasp could not be
suspected of knowing.

I therefore take nine female Cerceres from
the same group of burrows that supplied me
in the morning. Three of them had just
been subjected to the previous test. They
were again carried in a dark box, each insect
enclosed in its paper bag. The starting-
point selected is the nearest town, Carpen-
tras, which lies at about two miles from the
burrow. I am to release my insects not
among the fields, as on the first occasion, but
absolutely in the street, in the centre of a
crowded neighbourhood, where the Cerceres,
with their rustic habits, had certainly never
penetrated. As the day is already far-ad-
vanced, I postpone the experiments; and my
captives spend the night in their prison-cells.

Next morning, at about eight, I mark
them on the thorax with two white spots, to
distinguish them from yesterday's lot, who
were marked with only one; and I set them
free, one after the other, in the middle of the
street. Each Cerceris released first shoots
straight up between the two rows of houses,
as though to escape as soon as possible from
the narrow street and gain the spacious hori-
zons; then, rising above the roofs, she at
334

The Return to the Nest

once darts away vigorously towards the
south. And it was from the south that I
brought them; it is in the south that their
burrows are. Nine times, with nine prison-
ers, freed one after the other, I had this
striking instance of the way in which the in-
sect stranded far from home takes without
hesitation the right direction for returning
to the nest.

I myself was at the burrows a few hours
later. I saw several of yesterday's Cer-
ceres, recognizing them by the one white
spot on the thorax; but I saw none of those
whom I had just let loose. Had they not
been able to find their home again? Were
they hunting? Or were they hiding in their
galleries to recover from the excitement of
such a trial? I do not know. Next day, I
paid a fresh visit; and this time I had the
satisfaction of finding at work, as active as
though nothing out of the way had hap-
pened, five of the Cerceres with two white
spots on the thorax. A journey of quite two
miles, the town with its houses, its roofs, its
smoky chimneys, all things so new to these
utter rustics, had not prevented them from
going back to the nest.

When taken from his brood and carried
335

The Hunting Wasps

to enormous distances, the Pigeon returns
promptly to the Dovecote. If we wanted to
work out a proportion between the length of
the journey and the size of the creature, how
greatly superior to the Pigeon would be the
Cerceris, who finds her burrow after being
carried a distance of two miles! The bulk
of the insect is not a cubic centimetre,^
whereas that of the Pigeon must be quite a
cubic decimetre,- if not more. The bird,
being a thousand times larger than the
Wasp, ought therefore, in order to rival her,
to find the Dovecote at a distance of two
thousand miles, which is thrice the greatest
length of France from north to south, I do
not know that a Carrier-pigeon has ever per-
formed such a feat. But power of flight
and, still less, lucidity of instinct are qualities
that cannot be measured by the yard. Com-
parative size cannot here be taken into con-
sideration; and we must just look upon the
insect as a worthy rival of the bird, without
deciding which of the two has the advantage.
In returning to the Dovecote and the bur-
row, when man has artificially made them
lose their bearings and carried them to great

1.061 cubic inch. — Translator's Note.
'^61 cubic inches. — Translator's Note.

336

The Return to the Nest

distances, in unfamiliar directions and into
regions which they have not yet visited, are
the Pigeon and the Cerceris guided by recol-
lection? Is memory their compass when, on
reaching a certain height, whence they can,
so to speak, pick up the scent after a fashion,
they dart with all their power of wing
towards the horizon where their nests are?
Is it memory that traces their road through
the air, across regions which they are seeing
for the first time? Obviously not: there can
be no recollection of the unknown. The
Wasp and the bird are unacquainted with the
country around; nothing can have told them
the general direction in which they were
moved, for the journey was made in the
darkness of a closed basket or a box. Lo-
cality, relative position: everything is un-
known to them; and yet they find their way.
They therefore have something better than
mere memory as a guide : they have a special
faculty, a sort of topographical sense of
which we cannot possibly form an idea, hav-
ing nothing similar ourselves.

I will show by experiment how subtle and
precise this faculty is within its narrow pro-
vince and also how obtuse and dull it be-
comes when driven to depart from the usual
337

The Hunting Wasps

conditions in which it acts. This is the in-
variable antithesis of instinct.

A Bembex, actively engaged in feeding
her larva, leaves the burrow. She will re-
turn presently with the produce of the chase.
The entrance is carefully stopped up with
sand, which the insect has swept there back-
wards before going away; there is nothing to
distinguish it from other points of the sandy
surface; but this does not trouble the Wasp,
who finds her door with a skill which I have
already emphasized. Let us devise some in-
sidious plot and change the conditions of the
locality in order to perplex the insect. I
cover the entrance with a flat stone, the size
of my hand. The Wasp soon arrives.
The great change effected on her threshold
during her absence appears to cause her not
the slightest hesitation; at least, the Bembex
at once alights upon the stone and tries, for
an instant, to dig into it, not at random but
at a spot corresponding with the opening of
the burrow. The hardness of the obstacle
soon dissuades her from her enterprise.
She then runs about the stone in every direc-
tion, goes all round it, slips underneath and
begins to dig in the exact direction of her
dwelling.

338

The Return to the Nest

The flat stone is not enough to mislead
our wide-awake friend; we must find some-
thing better. To cut things short, I do not
allow the Bembex to continue her excava-
tions, which, I can see, will soon prove suc-
cessful; I drive her off with my handkerchief.
The fairly long absence of the frightened
insect will give me time to prepare my snares
at leisure. What materials shall I employ
now? In these improvised experiments, we
must know how to turn everything to use.
Not far off, on the high-road, are the fresh
droppings of some beast of burden. The
very thing! The droppings are collected,
broken up, crumbled and then spread in a
" layer at least an inch thick on the threshold
of the burrow and all around, covering about
a quarter of a square yard. This certainly
is a house-front the like of which no Bembex
ever knew. The colouring, the nature of
the materials, the stercoral effluvia all com-
bine to mystify the Wasp. Will she take all
this — that expanse of manure, that dung —
for the front of her door? Why, yes: here
she comes! She inspects the unwonted con-
dition of the place from above and settles in
the middle of the layer, just opposite the en-
trance. She digs, makes a hole through the
339

The Hunting Wasps

stringy mass and reaches the sand, where
she at once finds the orifice of the passage.
I stop her and drive her away a second time.

Is not the precision with which the Wasp
alights just in front of her door, though this
be masked in a way so new to her, a proof
that sight and memory are not her only
guide? What else can there be? Could it
be scent? It is very doubtful, for the ema-
nations from the droppings have not been
able to baffle the insect's perspicacity. Still,
let us try a different smell. I happen to
have on me, as part of my entomological
luggage, a small phial of ether. I sweep
away the sheet of manure and replace it by
a blanket of moss, not very thick, but spread-
ing to a considerable distance; and I pour
the contents of my phial on it as soon as I
see the Bembex arrive. The ethereal fumes,
at first too strong, keep the Wasp away, but
only for a moment. Then she alights on
the moss, which still exhales a very percepti-
ble smell of ether, passes through the ob-
stacle and makes her way indoors. The
ethereal effluvia put her out no more than
did the stercoral effluvia. Something surer
than scent tells her where her nest lies.

The antennae have often been suggested as
340

The Return to the Nest

the seat of a special sense able to guide In-
sects. I have already shown how the am-
putation of those organs seems in no way
to impede the Wasp's investigations. Let
us try once more, under more complicated
conditions. I seize the Bembex, cut off her
antennse at the roots and at once release her.
Goaded by pain, maddened at having been
imprisoned in my fingers, the insect darts off
faster than an arrow. I have to wait for a
good hour, very uncertain as to whether it
will come back. The Wasp arrives however
and, with her unvarying precision, alights
quite close to her door, whose appearance I
have changed for the fourth time. The site
of the nest is now covered with a spreading
mosaic of pebbles the size of a walnut. My
work, which, as regards the Bembex, sur-
passes what the megalithic monuments of
Brittany or the rows of menhirs at Carnac
are to us, is powerless to deceive the muti-
lated insect. Though deprived of her an-
tennae, the Wasp finds her entrance in the
middle of my mosaic as easily as the same
Insect, supplied with those organs, would
have done under other conditions. This
time I let the faithful mother go Indoors in
peace.

341

The Hunting Wasps

Four successive alterations in the site;
changes in the colour, the smell, the materials
of the outside of the home; lastly, the pain
of a double wound: all had failed to baffle
the Wasp or even to make her waver as to
the precise locality of her door. I had come
to the end of my stratagems and understood
less than ever how the insect, if it possess no
special guide in some faculty unknown to us,
can find its way when sight and scent are
baffled by the artifices which I have men-
tioned.

A few days later, a lucky experiment re-
opened the question and allowed me to
study it under another aspect. In this case,
we uncover the Bembex' burrow all the way
along, without changing its appearance too
much, an operation made easier by the shal-
lowness of the burrow, its almost horizontal
direction and the lack of consistency of the
soil in which it is dug. With this object we
scrape the sand away gradually with a knife.
Thus deprived of its roof from end to end,
the underground dwelling becomes an open
trench, a conduit, straight or curved, some
eight inches long, open at the spot where the
entrance-door used to be and finishing in a
342

The Return to the Nest

blind alley at the other end, where the larva
lies amid its victuals.

Here is the home uncovered, in the bright
light, under the sun's rays. How will the
mother behave on her return? Let us con-
sider the question in detail, according to sci-
entific precepts: it Is a perplexing position for
the observer, as my recent experiences make
me suspect. Here is the problem : the mother
on arriving has the feeding of her larva as
her object In view; but to reach this larva
she must first find the door. The grub and
the entrance-door: those are the two aspects
of the question that appear to me to merit
separate consideration. I therefore take
away the grub, together with the provisions,
and the end of the passage becomes a clear
space. After making these preparations
there Is nothing to do but exercise patience.

The Wasp arrives at last and goes
straight to where its door ought to be, that
door of which naught but the threshold re-
mains. Here, for more than an hour, I see
her digging on the surface, sweeping, making
the sand fly and persisting, not in scooping
out a new gallery, but in looking for that
loose door which ought easily to give way
343

The Hunting Wasps

before a mere push of the head and let the
insect through. Instead of yielding ma-
terials, she finds firm soil, not yet disturbed.
Warned by this resistance, she confines her-
self to exploring the surface, always in close
proximity to the spot where the entrance
should be. A few inches on either side is all
that she allows herself. The places which
she has already tested and swept twenty
times over she returns to test and sweep
again, unable to bring herself to leave her
narrow radius, so obstinate is her conviction
that the door must be here and no elsewhere.
Several times in succession I push her gently
with a straw to some other point. She will
not be put off: she returns straightway to the
place where her door once stood. At rare
intervals, the gallery, now an open trench,
seems to attract her attention, though very
faintly. The Bembex takes a few steps
towards it, still raking, and then goes back
to the entrance. Twice or thrice I see her
run the whole length of the conduit and
reach the blind alley, the abode of her grub;
here she gives a few careless strokes of the
rake and hurries back to the spot where the
entrance used to be, continuing her quest
there with a persistency that ends by weary-
344

The Return to the Nest

ing mine. More than an hour has passed
and the stubborn Wasp is still pursuing her
search on the site of the vanished doorway.

What will happen when the larva is pre-
sent? This is the next aspect of the question.
To continue the experiment with the same
Bembex would not have given me the posi-
tive evidence which I wanted, for the insect,
rendered more obstinate by its vain quest,
seemed to me now obsessed by a fixed idea,
which would certainly have obscured the
facts which I wished to ascertain. I needed
a fresh subject, one not overexcited and
solely concerned with the Impulses of the
first moment. An opportunity soon pre-
sented itself.

I uncover the burrow from end to end as
I have just explained, but without touching
the contents: I leave the larva in its place, I
respect the provisions; everything in the
house Is In order; there Is nothing lacking
but the roof. Well, in front of this open
dwelling, of which the eye freely takes In
every detail : entrance-hall, gallery, cell at
the back with the grub and its heap of Files;
In front of this dwelling now a trench, at the
end of which the larva wriggles under the
blistering rays of the sun, the mother be-
345

The Hunting Wasps

haves exactly as her predecessor did. She
alights at the point where the entrance used
to be. It Is here that she does her digging
and sweeping; and it is here that she always
returns after hurried visits elsewhere, within
a radius of a few inches. There Is no ex-
ploration of the tunnel, no anxiety about the
tortured .larva. The grub, whose delicate
epidermis has just passed from the cool
moisture of an underground cave to the
fierce blaze of an untempered sun, is writh-
ing on its heap of chewed Flies; the mother
does not give It a thought. To her it Is no
more than any other object lying on the sand:
a little pebble, a pellet of earth, a scrap of
dry mud, nothing more. It Is unworthy of
attention. This tender and faithful mother,
who wears herself out In trying to reach her
nursehng's cradle, L' wanting at the moment
her entrance-door, the usual door and no-
thing but that door. What stirs her ma-
ternal heart is her yearning for the well-
known passage. And yet the way is open:
there is nothing to stop the mother; and the
grub, the ultimate object of her anxiety, is
tossing restlessly before her eyes. One
bound would bring her to the side of the
poor thing clamouring for assistance. Why
346

The Return to the Nest

does she not rush to her beloved nurseling?
She could dig It a new dwelling and swiftly
place It In safety underground. But no : the
mother persists In seeking a passage that no
longer exists, while her child Is grilling In
the sun before her eyes. My surprise Is In-
tense in the presence of this short-sighted
mother, though the sense of motherhood Is
the most powerful and resourceful of all the
feelings that stir the animal creation. I
should hardly believe the evidence of my
eyes but for experiments endlessly repeated
with Cerceres and PhilanthI as well as with
Bembex of different species.

Here Is something more remarkable still:
the mother, after prolonged hesitation, at
last enters the roofless trench, all that re-
mains of the original corridor. She goes
forward, draws back, goes forward again,
giving a few careless sweeps, here and there,
without stopping. Guided by vague recol-
lections and perhaps also by the smell of
game emitted by the heap of Flies, she oc-
casionally reaches the end of the gallery, the
very spot at which the larva lies. Mother
and son are now together. At this moment
of meeting after long suffering, have we a
display of eager solicitude, exuberant affec-
347

The Hunting Wasps

tion, any signs whatever of maternal joy?
If you think so, you need only repeat my ex-
periments to persuade yourself to the con-
trary. The Bembex does not recognize her
larva at all; it Is to her a worthless thing,
something in her way, a nuisance. She
walks over the grub, treads on it ruthlessly,
as she hurries to and fro. When she wants
to try and dig at the bottom of the cell, she
thrusts it back with a brutal kick; she shoves
it on one side, topples it over, flings it out as
unceremoniously as if it were a big bit of
gravel that hindered her in her work. Thus
knocked about, the grub thinks of defending
itself. I have seen it seize its mother by
the tarsus with no more ceremony than it
shows when it bites off the leg of its prey,
the Fly. The struggle was hotly contested;
but at last the fierce mandibles let go and the
mother vanished in terror, making a shrill
whimpering noise with her wings. This un-
natural sight of the son biting his mother
and perhaps even trying to eat her is uncom-
mon and is brought about by circumstances
which the observer has not at his command;
but what can always be witnessed is the
Wasp's profound indifference towards her
offspring and the brutal contempt with which
348

The Return to the Nest

she treats that Irksome lump of rubbish, the
grub. Once she has raked out the end of
the passage, which is the work of a moment,
theBembex returns to her favourite spot, the
threshold, where she resumes her useless
search. As for the grub, it continues to
writhe and wriggle wherever its mother has
kicked It. It will die without the mother's
coming to its assistance, for she fails to re-
cognize it because she was unable to find the
customary passage. Go back to-morrow
and you shall see it lying in its trench, half-
baked by the sun and already a prey to the
very Flies that were once its prey.

Such is the concatenation of instinctive
actions, linked one to the other In an order
which the gravest circumstances are power-
less to disturb. What, after all, is the Bem-
bex looking for? Her larva, obviously.
But, to get at that larva, she must enter the
burrow; and, to enter that burrow, she must
first of all find the door. And it is In the
search for this door that the mother persists,
despite the wide-open gallery, despite the
provisions, despite the grub, all exposed to
view. At the moment she cares not that
her house Is in ruins and her family In dan-
ger; what she wants above all things is the
349

The Hunting Wasps

familiar passage, the passage through the
loose sand. Perish everything, dwelling and
inmate, if this passage be not found! Her
actions are like a series of echoes each awa-
kening the next in a settled order, which
allows none to sound until the previous one
has sounded. The first action could not be
performed, not because of an obstacle, for
the house is wide open, but for want of the
usual entrance. That is enough: the sub-
sequent actions shall not be performed; the
first echo was dumb and all the rest are
silent. What a gulf separates Intelligence
and Instinct! Through the ruins of the de-
molished dwelling, a mother guided by In-
telligence hurries straight to her son; guided
by instinct, she comes to a stubborn halt on
the site of her old door.

350

CHAPTER XVIII

THE HAIRY AMMOPHILA

ONE day in May, I was walking up and
down, on the look-out for anything
fresh that might be taking place in the har-
mas ^ laboratory. Favier was not far off,
at work in the kitchen-garden. Who is
Favier? I may as well say a few words
about him at once, for we shall be hearing
of him again.

Favier is an old soldier. He has pitched
his hut of clay and branches under the Afri-
can carob-trees; he has eaten Sea-urchins at
Constantinople; he has shot Starlings in the
Crimea, during a lull in the firing. He has
seen much and remembered much. In win-
ter, when work in the fields ends at four
o'clock and the evenings are long, he puts
away rake, fork and barrow and comes and
sits on the hearth-stone of the kitchen fire-
place, where the billets of ilex-wood blaze
merrily. He fetches out his pipe, fills it

^The piece of waste ground on which the author used
to study his insects in their natural state. Cf. The Life
of the Fly: chap. i. — Translator's Note.

The Hunting Wasps

methodically with a moistened thumb and
smokes it solemnly. He has been thinking
of it for many a long hour; but he has ab-
stained, for tobacco is expensive. The pri-
vation has doubled the charm; and not a
puff, recurring at regular intervals, is wasted.

Meanwhile, we start talking. Favier is,
in his fashion, one of those bards of old who
were given the best seat at the hearth, for
the sake of their tales; only, my story-teller
was formed in the barrack-room. No mat-
ter: the whole household, large and small,
listen to him with interest; though his speech
is full of vivid images, it is always decent. It
would be a great disappointment to us if he
did not come, when his work was done, to
take his ease in the chimney-corner.

What does he talk about to make him so
popular? He tells us what he saw of the
coup d'Etat to which we owe the hated Em-
pire; he talks of the brandy served out and
of the firing into the mob. He — so he
assures me — always aimed at the wall; and
I accept his word for it, so distressed does he
appear to me and so ashamed of having
taken a hand, however innocent. In that
felon's game.

He tells us of his watches in the trenches
352

The Hairy Ammophila

before Sebastopol; he speaks of his sudden
terror when, at night, all alone on outpost
duty, squatting in the snow, he saw fall be-
side him what he calls a flower-pot. It
blazed and flared and shone and lit up every-
thing around. The infernal machine threat-
ened to burst at every second; and our man
gave himself up for lost. But nothing hap-
pened: the flower-pot went out quietly. It
was a star-shell, an illuminating-contrivance
fired to reconnoitre the assailant's outworks
in the dark.

The tragedy of the battle-field Is followed
by the comedy of the barracks. He lets us
into the mysteries of the stew-pan, the secrets
of the mess, the humorous hardships of the
cells. And, as his stock of anecdotes, sea-
soned with racy expressions. Is Inexhaustible,
the supper-hour arrives before any of us has
had time to remark how long the evening Is.
Favler first attracted my notice by a mas-
ter-stroke. One of my friends had sent me
from Marseilles a pair of enormous Crabs,
the Mala, the Sea-spider or Spider-crab of
the fishermen. I was unpacking the cap-
tives when the workmen returned from their
dinner: painters, stone-masons, plasterers en-
gaged in repairing the house which had been
353

The Hunting Wasps

empty so long. At the sight of those
strange animals, studded with spikes all over
the carapace and perched on long legs that
give them a certain resemblance to a mon-
strous Spider, the onlookers gave a cry of
surprise, almost of alarm. Favier, for his
part, remained unmoved; and, as he skil-
fully seized the terrible Spider struggling to
get away, he said:

"I know that thing; I've eaten It at
Vasna. It's first-rate."

And he looked round at the bystanders
with an air of humorous mockery which was
meant to convey:

" You've never been out of your hole, you
people."

One more story of him, to have done. A
woman living in his neighbourhood had been,
by the doctor's advice, to take the sea-baths
at Cette. She returned from her trip bring-
ing with her a curious thing, a strange fruit
on which she based high hopes. When held
to the ear and shaken, it rattled, proving
that it contained seeds. It was round and
prickly. At one end was a sort of bud,
closed with a Httle white flower; at the other,
a slight cavity was pierced with a few holes.

The neighbour ran round to Favier to
354

The Hairy Ammophila

show him her find and asked him to mention
it to me. She would make me a present of
the precious seeds, the Idea being that some
wonderful shrub would grow from them and
beautify my garden.

" Faqui la flou, vaqtii loti pecoti: here is
the flower, here Is the tall," she said, show-
ing Favler the two ends of her fruit.

Favler roared with laughter:

" It's a Sea-urchin," he said, " a Sea-
chestnut; I've eaten them at Constantino-
ple!"

And he explained as best he could what a
Sea-urchin Is. The woman did not under-
stand a word of what he said and persisted
in her contention. She was convinced that
Favler was deceiving her, jealous at the
thought that such precious seeds should reach
me through any other Intermediary than his.
The issue was submitted to me.

" Vaqui la flou, vaqui lou pecou," re-
peated the good woman.

I told her that the flou was the cluster
formed by the Urchin's five white teeth and
that the pecou was the antipodes of the
mouth. She went away only half-convinced.
It may be that, at this moment, the seeds of
the fruit, grains of sand rattling In the empty
355

The Hunting Wasps

shell, are germinating in some old broken-
mouthed pipkin.

Favier, therefore, knows many things; and
he knows them more particularly through
having eaten them. He knows the virtues
of a Badger's back, the toothsome qualities
of the leg of a Fox; he is an expert as to the
best part of that Eel of the bushes, the
Snake; he has browned in oil the Eyed Liz-
ard, the ill-famed Rassade of the South; he
has thought-out the recipe of a fry of Lo-
custs. I am astounded at the impossible
stews which he has concocted during his cos-
mopolitan career.

I am no less surprised at his penetrating
eye and his memory for things. I have only
to describe some plant, which to him is but a
nameless weed, devoid of the least interest;
and, if it grows in our woods, I feel pretty
sure that he will bring it to me and tell me
the spot where I can pick it for myself.
The botany of the infinitesimal even does not
foil his perspicacity. To complete my al-
ready-pubhshed work on the Sphasriaceae of
Vaucluse, I resume my patient herborizing
with the lens during the bad weather, the in-
sect's slack time. When the frost hardens
the ground, when the rains reduce it to slush,
356

The Hairy Ammophila

I take Favier away from his work in the
garden to scour the woods with me; and
there, in the tangle of some bramble-bush,
we hunt together for those microscopic
growths which speckle with black dots the
tiny branches strewn all over the soil. He
calls the largest species " gunpowder," an
accurate expression which has already been
used by the botanists to describe one of those
Sphaeriaceae. He feels quite proud of his
bunch of discoveries, which is richer than
mine. When he lights upon a magnificent
rosellinia, a mass of black pustules wrapped
in a purplish down, we smoke a pipe to cele-
brate the joyous occasion.

He excels, above all things. In ridding me
of the troublesome folk whom I meet upon
my rambles. The peasant is naturally curi-
ous, as fond of asking questions as a child;
but his curiosity Is flavoured with a spice of
malice and in all his questions there Is an
undercurrent of chaff. What he fails to un-
derstand he turns Into ridicule. And what
can be more ludicrous than a gentleman look-
ing through a glass at a Fly captured with a
gauze net, or a bit of rotten wood picked
up from the ground? Favier cuts short the
bantering catechism with a word.
357

The Hunting Wasps

We were hunting along the ground, step
by step, with bent backs, for some of the evi-
dences of prehistoric times that abound on
the south side of the mountain: serpentine-
stone axes, black potsherds, flint arrow-heads
and spear-heads, flakes, side-scrapers, cores.

" What does your master do with those
payrardsf " ^ asked a new arrival.

" He makes them into putty for the gla-
ziers," replied Favler, with an air of solemn
assurance.

Another time, I had just gathered a hand-
ful of Rabblt-dropplngs In which the mag-
nlfylng-glass had shown me a cryptogamous
growth worthy of further Inspection. Up
comes an Inquisitive person who has seen me
carefully packing the precious windfall In a
paper bag. He suspects a money-making
business, some crazy trade or other. Every-
thing, to the countryman, is translatable Into
terms of francs and sous. In his eyes, I am
making a steady income out of these Rabbit-
droppings.

" What does your master do with those
petourlesf " ^ he asks Favler, In ingratiating
tones.

^Gun-flints. — Author's Note.

^The local expression. — Author's Note.

358

The Hairy Ammophila

" He distils them to extract the essential
oils," replies my man, with magnificent self-
possession.

Stunned by this revelation, the questioner
turns his back and goes away.

But let us waste no more time with the
waggish old soldier and his smart repartees
and let us rather come to what was attract-
ing my attention in the harmas laboratory.
Some Ammophilae were exploring on foot,
with brief intervals of flight, both the grass
and the bare patches of ground. I had seen
them as early as the middle of March, when
a fine day made its appearance, warming
themselves luxuriously in the dusty paths.
All belonged to the same species, the Hairy
Ammophila {A. hirsuta, KiRB.). I have al-
ready written of the hibernation of this Am-
mophila and her venery in mid-spring, at a
period when the other Hunting Wasps are
still imprisoned in their cocoons; I have de-
scribed her manner of operating on the cater-
pillar destined for her grub; I have told of
the repeated stings of her dart, distributed
over the different nerve-centres. This scien-
tific vivisection I had as yet observed but
once; and I longed to see it again. Some-
thing might have escaped me on the first
359

The Hunting Wasps

occasion, when a long walk had tired me;
and, even if I had really seen everything cor-
rectly, it was advisable to witness the per-
formance a second time, so as to establish its
authenticity beyond all doubt. I may add
that one would never weary of the spectacle,
even if it were repeated a hundred times

over.

I therefore watched my Ammophilae trom
the moment of their first appearance; and, as
I had them here, within my precincts, only a
few steps from my door, I could not fail to
catch them hunting, provided that my assidu-
ity were not relaxed. The end of March
and the whole of April were spent in vain
waiting, either because the moment of nidi-
fication had not yet come, or, more probably,
because my vigilance was at fault. At last,
on the 17th of May, a lucky chance pre-
sented itself.

A few Ammophilae strike me as very busy :
suppose we follow one of them, more active
than the rest. I detect her giving a last
sweep of the rake to her burrow, on the
smooth, hard path, before introducing her
caterpillar, which, already paralysed, must
have been abandoned by the huntress, for the
time being, a few yards away from the home.
360

The Hairy Ammophila

The cave Is pronounced spick and span, the
doorway deemed sufficiently wide to admit a
bulky prey; and the Ammophila sets off in
search of her captive. She finds it easily.
It is a Grey Worm, lying on the ground; and
the Ants have already invaded it. This
prize, for which the Ants contend with her,
is scorned by the huntress. Many preda-
tory Wasps, who temporarily leave their
prisoner to go and complete the burrow, or
even to begin it, lodge their game high up,
on a tuft of verdure, to place it beyond the
reach of plunderers. The Ammophila is
familiar with this prudent practice; but per-
haps she has omitted to take the precaution,
or else the heavy prize has fallen to the
ground and now the Ants are tugging in
eager rivalry at the sumptuous fare. To
drive away those pilferers is impossible: for
one sent to the right about, ten would return
to the at^iack. So the Wasp seems to think;
for, realizing the invasion, she resumes her
hunting, without indulging in useless strife.
The quest takes place within a radius of
ten yards from the nest. The Ammophila
explores the soil on foot, little by little, with-
out hurrying; she lashes the ground continu-
ally with her antennae curved like a bow.
361

The Hunting Wasps

The bare soil, the pebbly bits, the grassy
parts are visited without distinction. For
nearly three hours, in the heat of the sun, in
sultry weather which means rain to-morrow
and a few drops to-night, I watch the Am-
mophila's search, without taking my eyes
from her for a second. What a difficult
thing a Grey Worm is to find, for a Wasp
who needs it just at that moment !

It is no less difficult for man. The reader
knows my method of witnessing the surgical
operation to which a Hunting Wasp subjects
her prey, with a view to giving her grubs
flesh that is lifeless but not dead. I rob the
marauder of her spoil and, in exchange, give
her a live prey, similar to her own. I was
arranging the same manoeuvre with regard to
the Ammophila, so that, after she had smit-
ten her caterpillar, which she was bound to
find at any moment now, I might make her
perform the operation a second time. I was
therefore in urgent need of a few Grey
Worms.

Favier was there, gardening. I called out
to him:

" Come here, quick; I want some Grey
Worms I "

I explain the thing to him; for that mat-
362

The Hairy Ammophila

ter, he has known all about It for some time.
I have talked to him of my little creatures
and the caterpillars which they hunt; he has
a general knowledge of the habits of the in-
sect which I am studying. He understands
at once and goes in search. He digs at the
foot of the lettuces, he scrapes among the
strawberry-beds, he inspects the iris-borders.
I know his sharp eyes and his intelligence; I
have every confidence in him. Meanwhile,
time passes.

"Well, Favier? Where's that Grey
Worm?"

" I can't find one, sir."

" Bother ! Then come to the rescue, you
others! Claire, Aglae, all of you! Hurry
up, hunt and find! "

The whole family Is brought into requisi-
tion. All its members display an activity
worthy of the serious events at hand. I my-
self, chained to my post lest I should lose
sight of the Ammophila, keep one eye upon
the huntress and with the other watch for
Grey Worms. Nothing turns up : three
hours pass and not one of us has found the
caterpillar.

The Ammophila does not find It either. I
see her hunting with some persistency Ir
363

The Hunting Wasps

spots where the earth Is slightly cracked.
The insect wears itself out in clearing-opera-
tions; with a mighty effort, it removes lumps
of dry earth the size of an apricot-stone.
Those spots are soon abandoned, however.
Then a suspicion comes to me : the fact that
there are four or five of us vainly hunting for
a Grey Worm does not prove that the Am-
mophila is troubled with the same want of
skill. Where man is helpless, the insect
often triumphs. The exquisite delicacy of
perception that guides It cannot leave It at a
loss for hours together. Perhaps the Grey
Worm, foreseeing the gathering storm, has
dug Its way lower down. The huntress very
well knows where It lies, but cannot extract
it from Its deep hiding-place. When she
abandons a spot after a few attempts. It Is
not for want of sagacity, but for want of the
requisite power of digging. Wherever the
Ammophila scratches, there must a Grey
Worm be: the place Is abandoned because
the work of extraction Is admittedly beyond
her strength. It was very stupid of me not
to have thought of it earlier. Would such
an experienced poacher pay any attention to
a place where there is really nothing?
What nonsense !

364

The Hairy Ammophila

I thereupon resolve to come to her assist-
ance. The insect, at this moment, is dig-
ging a tilled and absolutely bare spot. It
leaves the place, as it has already done with
so many others. I myself continue the
work, with the blade of a knife. I do not
find anything either; and I retire. The in-
sect comes back and again begins to scratch
at a certain part of my excavations. I un-
derstand:

"Get out of that, you clumsy fellow!"
the Hymenopteron seems to say. " I'll
show you where the thing lives! "

Upon her indications, I dig at the required
spot and unearth a Grey Worm. Well
done, my canny Ammophila ! Did I not say
that you would never have raked at an empty
burrow ?

Henceforth, it is like a hunt for truffles,
which the Dog points out and the man ex-
tracts. I continue on the same system, the
Ammophila showing me the place and I dig-
ging with the knife. I thus obtain a second
Grey Worm, followed by a third and a
fourth. The exhumation is always effected
at bare spots that have been turned by the
pitchfork a few months earlier. There Is
absolutely nothing to denote the presence of
365

The Hunting Wasps

the caterpillar from without. Well, Favler,
Claire, Aglae and the rest of you, what have
you to say? In three hours, you have not
been able to dig me up a single Grey Worm,
whereas this clever huntress supplies me with
as many as I want, once that I have thought
of coming to her assistance !

I have now plenty of spare pieces; let us
leave the huntress her fifth prize, which she
unearths with my help. I will set forth in
numbered paragraphs the various acts of the
gorgeous drama that passes before my eyes.
The observation is made under the most
favourable conditions: I am lying on the
ground, close to the slaughterer, and not one
detail escapes me.

I. The Ammophlla seizes the caterpillar
by the back of the neck with the curved
pincers of her mandibles. The Grey Worm
struggles violently, rolling and unrolling its
contorted body. The Wasp remains quite
unconcerned: she stands aside and thus
avoids the shocks. Her sting strikes the
joint between the first segment and the head,
on the median ventral line, at a spot where
the skin is more delicate. The dart stays In
the wound with some persistency. This, it
appears, is the essential blow, which will mas-
366

The Hairy Ammophila

ter the Grey Worm and make it more easy
to handle.

2. The Ammoph'la now quits her prey.
She flattens herself on the ground, with wild,
disordered movements, rolling on her side,
twitching and dangling her limbs, fluttering
her wings, as though in danger of death. I
fear lest the huntress may have received a
nasty wound in the contest. I am overcome
with emotion at seeing the plucky Wasp fin-
ish so piteously, at seeing the experiment that
has cost me so many hours of waiting end in
failure. But suddenly the Ammophila re-
covers, smoothes her wings, curls her anten-
nae and returns briskly to the attack. What
I had taken for the convulsions of approach-
ing death was the frenzied enthusiasm of
victory. The Wasp was congratulating her-
self on the manner in which she had floored
the enemy.

3. The operator grips the caterpillar by
the skin of the back, a little lower than be-
fore, and pricks the second segment, still on
the ventral surface. I then see her gradu-
ally recoiling along the Grey Worm, each
time seizing the back a httle lower down,
clasping It with the mandibles, those wide
pincers with the curved jaws, and each time

367

The Hunting Wasps

driving the sting into the next segment.
This recoil of the insect and this gradual
clasping of the back, a little farther down on
each occasion, are effected with methodical
precision, as though the huntress were meas-
uring her prey. At each step backward, the
dart stings the following segment. In this
way are wounded the three thoracic seg-
ments, with the true legs; the next two seg-
ments, which are legless; and the four
segments with the prolegs. In all, nine
stings. The last four segments are dis-
regarded: they consist of three without legs
and the last, or thirteenth, with prolegs.
The operation is accomplished without seri-
ous difficulty: after the first prick of the
needle, the Grey Worm offers but a feeble
resistance.

4. Lastly, the Ammophila, opening the
forceps of her mandibles to their full width,
seizes the caterpillar's head and crunches it,
squeezes it with a series of leisurely move-
ments, without creating a wound. These
squeezings follow upon one another with de-
liberate slowness : the insect seems to try each
time to learn the effect produced; it stops,
waits and then resumes the attack. This
manipulation of the brain, to attain the de-
368

The Hairy Ammophila

sired end, must have certain Hmlts which, if
exceeded, would bring about death and
speedy putrefaction. And so the Wasp regu-
lates the force of her compressions, which,
moreover, are numerous : about a score, in
all.

The surgeon has finished. The patient
lies on the ground on its side, half doubled
up. It is motionless, lifeless, incapable of
resistance during the traction-process that is
to bring It home, unable to harm the grub
that Is to feed upon it. The Ammophila
leaves it at the place where the operation
was performed and goes back to her nest. I
follow her. She makes certain Improve-
ments in view of the coming storage. A
pebble projecting from the roof might Im-
pede the warehousing of the bulky quarry.
The lump Is forthwith removed. A rustle
of grazed wings accompanies the arduous
task. The back-room is not large enough:
it is widened. The work Is long-drawn-out;
and the caterpillar, which I have neglected to
watch, lest I should miss any of the Wasp's
doings. Is Invaded by the Ants. When the
Ammophila and I return to It, it is black all
over with busy carvers. This is a regret-
table Incident for me and a grievous event
365

The Hunting Wasps

for the Ammophila ; for it is the second time
that she has met with the same mishap.

The insect appears discouraged. In vain
I replace the caterpillar by one of my reserve
of Grey Worms: the Ammophila scorns the
substituted prey. Besides, evening is draw-
ing in, the sky has clouded, there are even a
few drops of rain falling. In these circum-
stances, it is needless to look for a renewal
of the chase. Everything, therefore, ends,
without my being able to use my Grey Worms
as I had proposed.

This observation kept me engaged, with-
out a moment's respite, from one o'clock in
the afternoon until six o'clock in the evening.

370

CHAPTER XIX

AN UNKNOWN SENSE

I HAVE described the Ammophila's hunt-
ing-tactics in detail. The facts which I
ascertained seem to me so rich in results that,
even if the hannas laboratory supplied me
with nothing more, I should think myself
indemnified by this one observation. The
surgical methods adopted by the Wasp with
the object of paralysing the Grey Worm are
the highest manifestation in the realm of
Instinct that I have hitherto met. This in-
born science Is eminently calculated to give us
food for thought. What a subtle logician,
what an unerring operator Is that unconscious
physiologist, the Ammophila !

He who would witness these marvels for
himself can hardly count on what a country-
walk may happen to show him; besides, if the
lucky opportunity did present itself, he would
not have time to profit by it. An observa-
tion which I kept up for five hours on end,
without even then managing to complete the
experiment and obtain the proofs which I
371

The Hunting Wasps

anticipated, is one that, to be properly con-
ducted, should be made at leisure in one's own
garden. I owe my success, therefore, to my
rustic laboratory. I make a present of the
secret to whosoever would continue those
magnificent studies : the harvest is inexhaust-
ible; there will be sheaves for all.

When we follow the Ammophila's hunting
in the due sequence of her actions, the first
question that suggests itself is this: how does
the Wasp go to work to recognize the spot
beneath which the Grey Worm Hes?

There is nothing outside, nothing, at least,
perceptible to the eye, to indicate the cater-
pillar's hiding-place. The soil that conceals
the quarry may be grassy or bare, flinty or
earthy, smooth or seamed with little cracks.
These varieties of appearance are matters
of indifference to the huntress, who prospects
every spot without showing preference for
one more than another. At no place where
the Wasp stops and digs with some persist-
ency do I see anything particular, in spite of
all my attention; and yet there must be a
Grey Worm there, as I have but now con-
vinced myself, five times in succession, by
lending a helping hand to the Insect, which
was at first discouraged by a task out of pro-
372

An Unknown Sense

portion to its strength. Sight, therefore, Is
certainly out of the question here.

What sense then? That of touch? Let
us enquire. Everything tells us that the or-
gans of search are the antennae. With their
tips, bent like a bow and quivering with a
continual vibration, the insect tests the
ground, giving a number of little taps.
When some crack shows, the restless threads
enter and sound it; when some grass-tuft
spreads its tangled root-stock along the
ground, the quivering of the antennse re-
doubles as they grope among Its knots and
angles. Their tips are applied for an instant
to the spot explored, moulding themselves, so
to speak, upon it. They suggest two tactile
filaments, two long fingers of incomparable
mobility, which gather information by feel-
ing. But the sense of touch can play no part
in revealing what is underground: the thing
to be felt is the Grey Worm; and the worm
is lying snug in its burrow, at a depth of some
inches below the surface.

We thereupon turn our thoughts to the
faculty of scent. Insects, there is no deny-
ing, possess the sense of smell, often very
highly developed. The Necrophori,^ the

^Burying-beetles. — Translator's Note.
373

The Hunting Wasps

Silphae/ the Hlsters,- the Dermestes ^ hasten
from every side to the spot where lies a Httle
corpse of which the ground is to be purged.
Guided by scent, these grave-diggers hurry
towards the dead Mole.

But, while the presence of the olfactory
sense in insects is indisputable, we still ask
ourselves where it is seated. Many declare
that the seat is in the antennae. Let us ad-
mit this, though it is difficult to understand
how a rod consisting of horny segments,
jointed end to end, can fulfill the office of a
nostril which is so very differently con-
structed. The organization of one appara-
tus having naught in common with the other,
can the impressions received by both be of
the same nature? When tools are dissimi-
lar, do their functions remain alike?

Besides, there are grave objections in the
case of our Wasp. Smell is a passive rather
than an active sense; it does not, like touch,
anticipate the impression: it receives it; It
does not enquire after the scented effluvium:
it accepts it when it comes. Now the Ammo-
phila's antennae are always moving: they in-

^Carrion-beetles. — Translator's Note.
^Mimic-beetles. — Translator's Note.
^Bacon-beetles. — Translator's Note.

374

An Unknown Sense

vestigate, they anticipate the impression.
The impression of what? If it were really
an impression of smell, repose would serve
them better than a perpetual quivering.

But there is more to be said: the olfactory
sense goes for nothing when there is no
smell. Now I have tested the Grey Worm
for myself; I have given it to young nostrils
to sniff, nostrils much more sensitive than
mine: not one of us has perceived the faint-
est trace of smell in the caterpillar. When
the Dog, famed for his scent, becomes aware
of the truffle underground, he is guided by
the tuber's savour, which is highly appre-
ciable by ourselves, even through the thick-
ness of the soil. I admit that the Dog has
a more subtle sense of smell than we have:
it is exercised at greater distances, it receives
more vivid and lasting impressions; never-
theless, it is impressed by odorous effluvia
which becomes perceptible to our own nos-
trils under the proper conditions of prox-
imity.

I will allow the Ammophila, if you like, a
scent as delicate as that of the Dog, more
delicate even; but still a smell is needed; and
I ask myself how that which is inodorous at
the very entrance to our nostrils can be odor
375

The Hunting Wasps

iferous to an insect through the intervening
obstacle of the ground. The senses, if they
have the same functions, have the same ex-
citants, from man to the Infusoria. No ani-
mal, so far as I know, can see clearly in what
to us is absolute darkness. True, it may be
said that, in the zoological progression, per-
ception, always fundamentally the same, has
varying degrees of power: this species is
capable of more and that species of less;
what is perceptible to one is imperceptible to
another. This is perfectly right; and yet the
insect, generally considered, does not appear
to possess exceptional keenness of scent: the
effluvia that attract it are perceived without
a sense of smell of unusual delicacy. When
Dermestes, Silphae and Histers pour into the
chalice of a carrion-scented arum lily, never
to come out again; when swarms of Flies
buzz around a dead Dog's blue and swollen
belly, the whole neighbourhood reeks with
the stench. It hardly requires a scent of ex-
quisite accuracy on the insect's part to dis-
cover putrid meat and rotten cheese. Wher-
ever we see its hordes gather, with scent for
their undoubted guide, we ourselves are cog-
nizant of a smell.

There remains hearing. This is another
376

An Unknown Sense

sense about which entomologists are not ade-
quately informed. Where is its seat? In
the antennae, we are told. Those fine, quiv-
ering stalks would seem fairly well-suited to
be put in motion under the impulse of sound.
In that case, the Ammophila, exploring the
region with her antennas, would be warned of
the presence of the Grey Worm by a slight
noise coming up from the ground, the noise
of the mandibles nibbling a root, the noise of
the caterpillar wriggling its hind-quarters.
What a faint sound and how difficult to trans-
mit through the spongy cushion of the earth!

It is less than faint, it is non-existent.
The Grey Worm Is nocturnal in its habits.
By day it skulks in its lair and does not stir.
It does not nibble either; at least, the Grey
Worms which I unearthed upon the Wasp's
indications were nibbling nothing, for the
very simple reason that they had nothing to
nibble. They were completely motionless
and therefore silent in a layer of earth de-
void of roots. The sense of hearing must
be rejected with that of smell.

The question recurs, more abstruse than

ever. How does the Ammophila go to work

to recognize the spot beneath which the Grey

Worm lies? The antennae are, beyond a

377

The Hunting Wasps

doubt, the organs that guide her. They do
not, in this case, act as olfactory instruments,
unless we admit that their dry and tough sur-
face, which has none of the delicate structure
required for the ordinary sense of smell, is
nevertheless capable of perceiving scents that
are non-existent to us. This would be equi-
valent to admitting that coarse tools tend to
perfection of work. Nor do they act as in-
struments of hearing, for there is no sound
to be discerned. What then is their func-
tion? I do not know and I despair of ever
knowing.

Inclined as we are — and it could not well
be otherwise — to judge all things by our
standard, the only one in any way known to
us, we attribute to animals our own means of
perception and do not dream that they might
easily possess others of which it is impossible
for us to have an exact idea because there is
nothing like them in ourselves. Are we
quite certain that they are not equipped, in
very varying degrees, for the purpose of sen-
sations as foreign to ourselves as the sensa-
tion of colours would be if we were blind?
Has matter no secrets left for us? Are we
so very sure that it is revealed to the living
being only by light, sound, taste, smell and
378

An Unknown Sense

touch? Physics and chemistry, young
though they be, already declare to us that
the dark unknown contains an enormous
harvest, in comparison with which our
scientific sheaf is the merest penury.
A new sense, perhaps that which dwells
in the grotesquely exaggerated nose of
the Rhinolophus,^ perhaps that which dwells
in the antennae of the Ammophila, would
open to our search a world which our
physical structure no doubt condemns us to
leave for ever unexplored. Cannot certain
properties of matter, which have no percept-
ible action upon us, find a receptive echo in
animals, which are differently equipped?

When Spallanzani,^ after blinding some
Bats, released them in a room converted into
a maze by means of cords stretched in every
direction and of heaped-up brambles, how
were those animals able to find their way
about, to fly quickly, to move to and fro, from
end to end of the room, without hitting the
interposed articles? What sense analogous
to any of ours guided them? Would some
one tell me and, above all, make me under-

^The Horseshoe Bat. — Translator's Note.
2Lazaro Spallanzani (1729-1799), the great Italian
naturalist. — Translator's Note.

379

The Hunting Wasps

stand? I should also like to understand how
the Ammophila infallibly finds her caterpil-
lar's burrow with the aid of her antennae. It
is not a case of the sense of smell: we should
have to presume it to possess an unparalleled
delicacy, while recognizing that it is exer-
cised by an organ in which no provision
seems made for the perception of smells.

What a number of other incomprehensible
things do we not ascribe to the insect's sense
of smell! We are satisfied with a word: the
explanation is ready-found, without laborious
search. But, if we care to consider the mat-
ter thoroughly, if we compare the requisite
array of facts, then the cliff of the unknown
rises abruptly, not to be climbed by the path
which we insist on following. Let us then
change our path and admit that animals may
have other means of information than our
own. Our senses do not represent the sum
total of the methods whereby an animal com-
municates with that which is not itself: there
are others not capable of comparison, how-
ever remote, with those which we possess.

If the act of the Ammophila were an iso-
lated fact, I should not have lingered over
it as I have done; but I propose to speak of
others stranger still, which will carry convic-
380

An Unknown Sense

tion to the most exacting mind. After re-
lating them, therefore, I shall return to the
subject of special senses, irreducible senses,
unknown to us.

For the moment, let us go back to the
Grey Worm, which it would be as well for
us to know in a less casual fashion. I have
four of them, dug up with the knife at the
spots indicated by the Ammophila. My in-
tention was to substitute them, by turns, for
the doomed victim, so as to see the Wasp's
operation repeated. When my plan failed,
I placed the worms in a glass jar, with a
layer of earth and a lettuce-stalk above them.
By day, my captives remained buried in the
earth; at night, they came up to the surface,
where I caught them gnawing at the salad
from below. In August, they dug deep
down, not to come up again, and fashioned
themselves a cocoon apiece of earth, very
rough on the outer surface, oval in shape
and the size of a small pigeon's egg. The
moth appeared at the end of the same month.
I recognized the Dart or Turnip Moth
{Nocttia segetum, Hubn.).

The Hairy Ammophila, therefore, feeds
her grubs on the caterpillars of Noctua?; and
her choice falls exclusively on the species that
381

The Hunting Wasps

live underground. These caterpillars, com-
monly known as Grey Worms, because of
their drab garb, are a most formidable
scourge to agricultural crops, as well as to
garden produce. Curled in their burrows
by day, they climb to the surface at night and
gnaw the base or collar of the herbaceous
plants. Everything suits them: ornamental
plants and edible plants alike. Flower-beds,
market-gardens, fields are laid waste without
distinction. When a seedling withers with-
out apparent cause, draw it to you gently; and
the dying plant will come up, but maimed,
severed from its root. The Grey Worm
has passed that way in the night; its greedy
mandibles have performed the deadly ampu-
tation. Its havoc rivals that wrought by the
White Worm, the grub of the Cockchafer.
When it swarms in a beet-country, the dam-
age amounts to millions. This is the terri-
ble enemy against which the Ammophila
comes to our aid.

I point out and urgently recommend to
to agriculturalists this valuable auxiliary, so
zealous in her search of the Grey Worm in
spring, so skilful in discovering its hiding-
place. An Ammophila In a garden may
mean the saving of a lettuce-bed, the snatch-
382

An Unknown Sense

Ing of a balsam-border from danger. But
there is need here for recommendations.
None would dream of destroying the pretty
Wasp who goes fluttering nimbly from one
path to the other, who visits this corner of
the garden, then that, then the next, then the
one over there; none dreams either — and
none, unfortunately, can dream — of assist-
ing her to multiply.

In the immense majority of cases, the in-
sect evades our influence : to exterminate it,
if it be harmful, to propagate it, if it be use-
ful, are impracticable undertakings for us.
By a singular contrast of strength and weak-
ness, man cuts through the neck of continents
to join two seas, he pierces the Alps, he
weighs the sun; and yet he cannot prevent a
wretched maggot from enjoying his cherries
before he himself does, nor an odious Louse
from destroying his vines ! The Titan is
vanquished by the pigmy.

Now we have here, in this insect-world, an
auxiliary of high merit, the supreme foe of
our grievous foe the Grey Worm. Can we
do anything to stock our fields and gardens
with it at will? We cannot; for the first
condition of multiplying the Ammophila
would be to multiply the Grey Worm, the
383

The Hunting Wasps

only food of her family of grubs. I do not
speak of the unsurmountable difficulties
which this breeding would present. We
have not to do with the Bee, who is faithful
to her hive, because of her social habits; still
less with the stupid Sill^worm, perched on its
mulberry-leaf, or Its clumsy Moth, who for
a moment flutters her wings, pairs, lays her
eggs and dies: we have to do with an insect
that is capricious in Its wanderings, swift of
flight and independent in its ways.

Besides, the first condition shatters all our
hopes. Would we have the helpful Ammo-
phila? Then we must resign ourselves to
accepting the Grey Worm. We move in a
vicious circle: to produce good we must in-
voke the aid of evil. The hostile band
brings the friendly troop to our fields; but
the second cannot live without the first; and
the two show an even balance in numbers.
If the Grey Worm abound, the Ammophlla
finds copious provender for her grubs and
her race prospers; if the Grey Worm be rare,
the Ammophlla's offspring decrease and dis-
appear. This balance between prosperity
and decadence Is the Immutable law that gov-
erns the proportions between devourers and
devoured.

384

CHAPTER XX

THE MODERN THEORY OF INSTINCT

THE larvae of the various Hunting
Wasps require their prey to be inca-
pable of movement, so that there may be no
resistance on the victim's part, which would
be a source of danger to the fragile egg and,
later, to the grub. Moreover, for all its
lethargy, it must still be alive; for the grub
would refuse to feed on a corpse. The fare
provided must be fresh meat and not pre-
served stuff. I have already laid stress on
these two antagonistic conditions, immobil-
ity and life, and enlarged on them so fully
that I need hardly dwell upon them for a
second time. I have shown how the Wasp
realizes them by the medium of a paralysis
which destroys movement and leaves the or-
ganic principle of life intact. With a skill
which our most famous vivisectors would
envy, the insect drives its poisoned sting into
the nerve-centres, the seat of muscular inci-
tation. The operator confines herself to one
stroke of the lancet, or else gives two, three
385

The Hunting Wasps

or more, according to the structure of the par-
ticular nervous system and to the number and
grouping of the gangha. The course of the
sting is determined by the exact anatomy of
the victim.

The particular prey of the Hairy Ammo-
phila is a caterpillar, each of whose nerve-
centres, which are distant one from the other
and to a certain extent independent in their
action, occupies a different segment of the
insect. This caterpillar, who is a very lively
customer, cannot be stored in the cell, with
the Wasp's egg upon his flank, until he has
lost all his power of motion. One move-
ment of his body would crush that egg
against the wall of the cell.

Now the paralysis of one segment would
not mean that the next was also rendered in-
capable of movement, because of the com-
parative independence of the seats of innerva-
tion. It is necessary, therefore, that all the
segments, or at least the most important, be
operated on, one after the other, from the
first to the last. The course which the Am-
mophila adopts is that which the most ex-
perienced of physiologists would recom-
mend: her sting is transferred from one seg-
ment to the next, nine separate times over.
386

The Modern Theory of Instinct

She does better than that. The victim's
head is still unscathed, the mandibles are at
work: they might easily, as the insect is
borne along, grip some bit of straw in the
ground and successfully resist this forcible
removal; the brain, the primary nervous
centre, might provoke a stubborn contest,
which would be very awkward with so heavy
a burden. It is well that these hitches should
be avoided. The caterpillar, therefore,
must be reduced to a state of torpor which
will deprive him of the leart inclination for
self-defence. The Ammophlla succeeds In
effecting this by munching his head. She
takes good care not to use her needle: she
Is no clumsy bungler and knows quite well
that to Inflict a mortal wound on the cervical
ganglia would mean killing the caterpillar
then and there, the very thing to be avoided.
She merely squeezes the brain between her
mandibles, calculating every pinch; and, each
time, she stops to ascertain the effect pro-
duced, for there is a nice point to be achieved,
a certain degree of torpor that must not be
exceeded, lest death should supervene. In
this way, the requisite lethargy is obtained,
a somnolence In which all volition Is lost.
And now the caterpillar. Incapable of reslst-
387

The Hunting Wasps

ance, Incapable of wishing to resist, Is seized
by the nape of the neck and dragged to the
nest. Comment would mar the eloquence of
such facts as these.

The Hairy Ammophila has twice allowed
me to attend her surgical operations. I have
described in an earlier chapter of this vol-
ume my first observation, which dates many
years back. On that occasion. I witnessed
the performance quite unexpectedly; to-day,
I have made all my preparations and have
plenty of time at my disposal, so that I am
able to make a much more thorough observa-
tion. In each case there was a multiplicity
of needle-pricks, which were distributed
methodically, from front to back, along the
ventral surface. Is the number of stings in-
deed identical in both cases? This time, it
is exactly nine. In the case of the victim
which I saw paralysed on the Plateau des
Angles, it seemed to me that the weapon in-
flicted more wounds, though I am not able
to state the precise number. It is quite pos-
sible that this number varies slightly and that
the last segments of the caterpillar, being
much less important than the others, are at-
tacked or left alone according to the size and
strength of the quarry to be Incapacitated.
388

The Modern Theory of Instinct

On the second occasion, moreover, I had
my first view of the squeezing process to
which the caterpillar's brain is subjected, a
process that produces the torpor which makes
the transport and storage of the victim pos-
sible. So remarkable a fact would not have
escaped me in the first instance; it did not,
therefore, take place. It follows that this
cerebral compression is a resource which the
Wasp has at her disposal, for use when cir-
cumstances demand it, as for Instance when
the victim seems likely to offer resistance on
the road.

The malaxation of the cervical ganglia is
optional: It has no bearing on the future of
the larva; the Wasp practises It, when need-
ful, to facilitate transport. I have seen the
Languedocian Sphex, who gave me so much
trouble in the old days, at work fairly often,
but only once has she performed this opera-
tion on the neck of her Ephipplger In my
presence. The invariable and absolutely
necessary part of the Hairy Ammophila's
procedure seems therefore to be the multl-
phclty of stings and their distribution one by
one over all or nearly all the nerve-centres
along the median line of the lower surface.

Let us place side by side with the murder-
389

The Hunting Wasps

ous art of the Wasp the murderous art of
man, practical man, whose business it is to
slay rapidly, I will here recall one of my
childhood's memories. We were school-
boys of twelve years old, or thereabouts.
We were being instructed in the woes of
Meliboeus, pouring out his sorrows on the
bosom of Tityrus, who offers him his chest-
nuts, his sour milk and his bed of fresh
bracken; ^ we were made to recite a poem by
Racine the Younger,- La Religion, A curi-
ous poem, forsooth, for children who cared
more for marbles than theology ! I remem-
ber just two lines and a half:

et, jiisque dans la fange,

L'insecte nous appelle et, certain de son

prix,
Ose nous demander raison de nos mepris.^

Why do these two lines and a half linger
in my memory and none of all the rest?

i"This night, at least, with me forget your care;
Chestnuts and curds and cream shall be your fare;
The carpet-ground shall be with leaves o'erspread
And boughs shall weave a covering for your head." —

Pastorals, book i, Dryden's translation.
2Louis Racine (1692-1763), son of Jean Racine.—^
Translator's Note.

3 and even in the mire,

The insect, of its worth assured, once and again
Ventures to challenge us to make good our disdain.
390

The Modern Theory of Instinct

Because already Scarabaiis and I were
friends. Those two lines and a half both-
ered me: I thought it a very absurd idea
to relegate you to the mire, ye insects so
seemly clad, so elegantly groomed. I knew
the bronze harness of the Carabus, the Rus-
sia-leather jerkin of the Stag-beetle; I knew
that the least of you possesses an ebon sheen
and gleams of precious metals; and therefore
the mire wherein the poet flung you shocked
me somewhat. If M. Racine Junior had
nothing better to say about you, he might as
well have held his tongue; but he did not
know you and, in his day, there were only
just a few who were beginning to have a dim
conception of your nature.

While going over some passage of the
tiresome poem for the next day's lesson, I
would indulge my fancy for another kind of
education. I visited the Linnet in her nest,
on a juniper-bush standing as high as myself;
I watched the Jay picking an acorn on the
ground; I came upon the Crayfish, still quite
soft after shedding his shell; I made enquir-
ies as to the exact date when the Cockchafers
were due; I went in quest of the first full-
blown Cuckoo-flower. Plants and animals,
that wondrous poem of which a faint echo
391

The Hunting Wasps

was beginning to wake in my young brain,
made a very pleasant change from the unin-
spiring alexandrine. The problem of life
and that other one, with its dark terrors, the
problem of death, at times passed through
my mind. It was a fleeting obsession, soon
forgotten by the mercurial spirits of youth.
Nevertheless, the tremendous question would
recur, brought to mind by this incident or
that.

Passing one day by a slaughter-house, I
saw an Ox driven in by the butcher. I have
always had an insurmountable horror of
blood; when I was a boy, the sight of an open
wound affected me so much that I would fall
into a swoon, which on more than one occa-
sion nearly cost me my life. How did I
screw up courage to set foot in those sham-
bles? No doubt, the dread problem of
death urged me on. At any rate, I entered,
close on the heels of the Ox.

With a stout rope round its horns, wet-
muzzled, meek-eyed, the animal moves along
as though making for the crib in its stable.
The man walks ahead, holding the rope.
We enter the hall of death, amid the sicken-
ing stench thrown up by the entrails scattered
392

The Modern Theory of Instinct

over the ground and the pools of blood.
The Ox becomes aware that this Is not his sta-
ble; his eyes turn red with terror; he strug-
gles; he tries to escape. But an iron ring is
there, in the floor, firmly fixed to a stone flag.
The man passes the rope through it and
hauls. The Ox lowers his head; his muzzle
touches the ground. While an assistant
keeps him in this position with the rope, the
butcher takes a knife with a pointed blade,
not at all a formidable knife, hardly larger
than the one which I myself carry in my
breeches-pocket. For a moment, he feels
with his fingers at the back of the animal's
neck and then drives in the blade at the
chosen spot. The great beast gives a shiver
and drops, as though struck by lightning:
procumbit hiimi bos, as we used to say in
those days.

I fled from the place like one possessed.
Afterwards, I wondered how it was possible,
with a knife almost identical with that which
I used for prizing open my walnuts and ta-
king the skin off my chestnuts, with that in-
significant blade, to kill an Ox and kill him
so suddenly. No gaping wound, no blood
spilt, not a bellow from the animal. The
393

The Hunting Wasps

man feels with his finger, gives a jab and
the thing is done : the Bullock's legs double
up under him.

This instantaneous death, this lightning-
stroke remained an awesome mystery to me.
It was only later, very much later, that I
learnt the secret of the slaughter-house, at
a time when, in the course of my promiscuous
reading, I was picking up a smattering of
anatomy. The man had cut through the
spinal marrow where it leaves the skull; he
had severed what our physiologists have
called the vital cord. To-day I might say
that he had operated in the manner of the
Wasps, whose lancet plunges into the nerve-
centres.

Let us watch this spectacle a second time,
under more exciting conditions: I mean, in
the saladeiros of South America, those im-
mense establishments for killing and treat-
ing meat, where they slaughter as many as
twelve hundred Oxen a day. I will quote
the account of an eye-witness : ^

" The cattle arrive in large herds and the
matance begins on the day after the arrival.

iL. Cou'n', in the Revue scientifique, 6 August, i88i. —
Author's Note.

394

The Modern Theory of Instinct

A whole herd Is confined in an enclosed
space, or margiieira. From time to time,
men on horseback drive fifty or sixty beasts
into a narrower and stronger enclosure, with
a sloping floor of brick, boards or concrete,
which is always very slippery. A special
operator, standing on an outer platform
which runs along the wall of the smaller
margiieira, lassoes one of the crowd of ani-
mals by the head or, more often, by the
horns. The middle portion of the long,
stout lasso is coiled round a windlass; and a
draught-horse, or sometimes a pair of oxen,
drags the lassoed beast along and makes it
slide, in spite of its struggles, right against
the windlass, where it is brought up with a
thud and remains without power of move-
ment.

" Another assistant, the desnucador, also
standing on the platform, has then but to
stick a knife, at the back of the head, be-
tween the occipital bone and the axis; and
the paralysed animal topples on to a trolley
in which it is carted off. It is at once thrown
on an inclined plane where other special la-
bourers bleed it and skin it. But, as the
injury to the cervical marrow varies a good
deal in position and extent. It often happens
395

The Hunting Wasps

that the unfortunate beasts still retain the
motions of the heart and of the respiratory
organs; and, in such cases, they suffer a
reaction under the knife; they utter faint
sounds of pain and move their limbs,
while already half-flayed and disembowelled.
Nothing could be more painful than the sight
of all those animals skinned alive, cut up and
transformed by those men, covered with
blood, who run about in all directions."

The murderous methods of the saladeiro
are an exact repetition of what I had seen
in the slaughter-house. In both these lethal
workshops, they pierce the vertebral mar-
row, at the base of the skull. The Ammo-
phila operates in a similar fashion, with this
difference, that her surgery is much more
complex, much more difficult, because of the
peculiar organization of her victim. The
honours are on her side again when we con-
sider the delicacy of the result obtained.
Her caterpillar is not a corpse, like the Ox
whose spinal cord is cut; it is alive, but in-
capable of movement. The insect here is
man's superior in all respects.

Now how did the butcher of our parts and
the desnucador of the pampas light upon the
396

The Modern Theory of Instinct

Idea of plunging a knife into the seat of the
marrow, in order to produce the sudden
death of a colossus which would never suffer
its throat to be cut without first offering a
dangerous resistance? Outside those in the
trade and men of science, nobody knows or
suspects the lightning result of that particu-
lar wound; we are almost all In the same
state of Ignorance on this subject In which I
myself was when my childish curiosity drew
me Into the kllllng-shed. The desmicador
and the butcher have learnt their craft from
the teachings of tradition and example : they
have had masters ; and these were brought up
in the school of other masters, harking back
by a chain of linked traditions to him who,
served, no doubt, by some hazard of the
chase, first realized the tremendous effects of
a wound in the nape of the neck. Who shall
tell us that a pointed flint-stone, driven by ac-
cident Into the spinal marrow of the Reindeer
or the Mammoth, did not rouse the attention
of the desmicador' s forerunner? A casual
incident furnished the original idea; observa-
tion confirmed it; reflection .matured it;
tradition preserved it; example disseminated
It. After that, the same transmission-cur-
rent. For generation might follow genera-
397

The Hunting Wasps

tion in vain: deprived of masters, the des-
nucador's descendants would return to the
primitive state of ignorance. Heredity
does not hand down the art of kiUing by
severing the spinal marrow: no man is born
a cattle-slayer by the desnucador's method.
Now here is the Ammophila, a slayer of
Caterpillars by a far more cunning method.
Where are the professors of the art of sting-
ing? There are not any. When the Wasp
rends her cocoon and issues from under-
ground, her predecessors have long ceased to
live; she herself will perish without seeing
her successors. Once the larder is stocked
and the egg laid, all connection with the off-
spring ends; this year's perfect insect dies
while next year's insect, still in the larval
stage, slumbers below ground in its silken
cot. Absolutely nothing, therefore, is trans-
mitted by practical illustration. The Am-
mophila is born a finished desniicador even
as we are born feeders at our mother's breast.
The nurseling uses its suction-pump, the Am-
mophila her dart, without ever being taught;
and both are past masters of the difl'icult art
from the first attempt. There we have in-
stinct, the unconscious impulse that forms an
essential part of the conditions of life and is
398

The Modern Theory of Instinct

handed down by heredity In the same way as
the rhythmic action of the heart and lungs.

Let us try, if possible, to trace the Ammo-
phila's instinct to Its source. We suffer to-
day, more than we ever did, from a mania
for explaining what might well be incapable
of explanation. There are some — and
their number seems to Increase daily — who
settle the stupendous question with magnifi-
cent audacity. Give them half-a-dozen cells,
a bit of protoplasm and a diagram for de-
monstration; and they will account to you for
everything. The organic world, the Intel-
lectual and moral world, everything derives
from the original cell, evolving by means of
Its own energies. It's as simple as A B C.
Instinct, roused by a chance action that has
proved favourable to the animal, Is an ac-
quired habit. And men argue on this basis,
invoking natural selection, heredity, the
struggle for life. I see plenty of big words,
but I should prefer a few small facts.
These little facts I have been collecting and
catechizing for nearly forty years; and their
replies are not exactly In favour of current
theories.

You tell me that instinct is an acquired
habit, that a casual circumstance, propitious
399

The Hunting Wasps

to the animal's offspring, was the first to
prompt it. Let us look into the thing more
closely. If I understand aright, we must
suppose some Ammophila, in a very remote
past, to have accidentally injured her cater-
pillar's nervous centres; to have found her-
self the gainer by this operation, both as
regards herself, in being released from a
struggle not unattended with danger, and as
regards her larva, thus supplied with fresh,
living and yet harmless victuals; and con-
sequently to have endowed her offspring, by
heredity, with a natural tendency to repeat
the advantageous device. The maternal
legacy did not benefit all the descendants
equally: some were poor hands at the new-
born art of the stiletto; others were adepts.
Then came the struggle for existence, the
hateful ^•^ victisf The weak went under,
the strong flourished; and, as age succeeded
age, selection by vital competition changed
the fleeting impression of the start into a
deep-rooted, ineffaceable impression, exem-
plified in the masterly instinct which we ad-
mire in the Wasp to-day.

Well, I avow, in all sincerity, this is ask-
ing a little too much of chance. When the
Ammophila first found herself in the pre-
400

The Modern Theory of Instinct

sence of her caterpillar, there was nothing,
you would have It, to guide the sting. The
choice was made at random. The pricks
were directed at the upper surface of the cap-
tureci prey, at the lower surface, at the sides,
the front and the baclc indiscriminately, ac-
cording to the fortunes of a close struggle.
The Hive-bee and the Social Wasp sting
those points which they are able to reach,
without showing a preference for one part
over the other. That is how the Ammophila
must have acted, when still ignorant of her
art.

Now how many points are there In a Grey
Worm, above and below? Mathematical
accuracy would answer, an Infinity; a few
hundreds will serve our purpose. Of this
number, nine or perhaps more have to be
selected; the needle must be Inserted there
and no elsewhere : a little higher, a little
lower, a little to one side. It would not pro-
duce the desired effect. If the favourable
event Is a purely accidental result, how many
combinations would be needed to bring It
about, how much time to exhaust all the pos-
sible cases? When the difficulty becomes
too pressing, you take refuge behind the mist
of the ages; you retreat Into the shadows of
401

The Hunting Wasps

the past as far as fancy can carry you ; you
call upon time, that factor of which we have
so little at our disposal and which, for this
very reason, is so well-suited to hide our illu-
sions. Here you can let yourselves go and
lavish the centuries. Suppose we shake up
hundreds of figures, all of different values,
in an urn and draw nine at random. When
shall we, in this wa)^, obtain a sequence fixed
beforehand, a sequence that stands alone?
The chance is so slight, answers mathemat-
ics, that we may as well put it down as nil
and say that the desired arrangement will
never come about. For the Ammophila of
the prehistoric age, the attempt was renewed
only at long intervals, from one year to the
next. Then how did this sequence of nine
stings at nine selected points emerge from
the urn of chance ? When I am driven to
appeal to infinity in time, I am very much
afraid of running up against absurdity.

" But," say you, " the insect did not at-
tain its present surgical dexterity at the out-
set: it went through experiments, apprentice-
ships, varying degrees of skill. There was
a weeding-out by natural selection, elimina-
ting the less expert, retaining the more gifted;
and instinct, as we know it, developed gradu-
402

The Modern Theory of Instinct

ally, thanks to the accumulation of individual
capacities, added to those handed down by
heredity."

The argument is erroneous : instinct deve-
loped by degrees is flagrantly impossible in
this case. The art of preparing the larva's
provisions allows of none but masters and
suffers no apprentices; the Wasp must excel
in it from the outset or leave the thing alone.
Two conditions, in fact, are absolutely essen-
tial: that the insect should be able to drag
home and store a quarry which greatly sur-
passes it In size and strength; and that the
newly-hatched grub should be able to gnaw
peacefully, in its narrow cell, a live and com-
paratively enormous prey. The suppression
of all movements in the victim Is the only
means of realizing these conditions; and this
suppression, to be complete, requires sundry
dagger-thrusts, one in each motor centre. If
the paralysis and the torpor be not sufficient,
the Grey Worm will defy the efforts of the
huntress, will struggle desperately on the road
and will not reach the journey's end; If the
Immobility be not complete, the egg, fixed
at a given spot on the worm, will perish un-
der the contortions of the giant. There is
no via media, no half-success. Either the
403

The Hunting Wasps

caterpillar is treated according to rule and
the Wasp's family is perpetuated; or else the
victim is only partially paralysed and the
Wasp's offspring dies in the egg.

Yielding to the inexorable logic of things,
we will therefore admit that the first Hairy
Ammophila, after capturing a Grey Worm
to feed her larva, operated on the patient by
the exact method in use to-day. She seized
the creature by the skin of the neck, stabbed
it underneath, opposite each of the nerve-
centres and, if the monster threatened fur-
ther resistance, munched its brain. It must
have happened like this; for, once more, an
unskilled murderess, doing her work In a per-
functory and haphazard fashion, would leave
no successor, since the rearing of the egg
would become Impossible. Save for the per-
fection of her surgical powers, the slayer of
fat caterpillars would die out in the first
generation.

Again I hear you say:

" The Hairy Ammophila, before hunting
the Grey Worm, may have picked out feebler
caterpillars and heaped up several in one
cell, until they represented the same bulk of
provender as the big prey of to-day. With
puny game, a few thrusts of the needle, per-
404

The Modern Theory of Instinct

haps one, would be enough. Gradually,
large-sized prey came to be preferred, as re-
ducing the number of hunting-expeditions.
Then, as successive generations went after
bigger game, the dagger-strokes were multi-
plied, in proportion to the victim's power of
resistance; and, by degrees, the elementary
instinct of the outset became the highly-
developed instinct of our time."

To these arguments we may begin by re-
plying that the larva's change of diet and the
substitution of one morsel for a number are
diametrically opposed to what happens be-
fore our eyes. The Hunting Wasp, as we
know her, is extremely loyal to old customs;
she has sumptuary laws which she never
transgresses. She who fed on Weevils in
her youth puts Weevils and naught else in
her larva's cell; she who was supplied with
Buprestis-beetles persists in the fare which
she has adopted and serves her larva with
Buprestis-beetles. One Sphex must have
Crickets; a second. Grasshoppers; a third,
Locusts. Nothing is accepted but these par-
ticular dishes. The Bembex who hunts Gad-
flies revels in them and refuses to do without
them, whereas Stizus ruficorms, who fills the
larder with Praying Mantes, scorns any other
405

The Hunting Wasps

game. And so with the rest. They have
each their own taste.

It is true that many allow themselves a
more varied bill of fare, but only within the
limits of one entomological group : thus the
Weevil- and Buprestis-hunters prey upon
any species proportioned to their strength.
Were the Hairy Ammophila to make a
change in her diet, that would be her case
too. Whether small and sundry to each cell
or large and single, the prey would always
consist of caterpillars. So far, so good.
But there remains the question of the many
replaced by the unit; and I do not yet know
one instance of such an alteration in the
Wasp's habits. She who stocks the burrow
with a single joint never thinks of heaping
up several of smaller size; she who goes on
repeated expeditions to stack a quantity of
game in the same cell does not know how to
limit herself to one head by choosing larger
meat. The result of my observations never
varies In this regard. The prehistoric Am-
mophila, who abandoned her multiplicity of
small game for one colossal head, has no-
thing to warrant her existence.

If the point were conceded, would the ques-
tion be advanced? Not in the least.. Let
406

The Modern Theory of Instinct

us accept as the initial prey a feeble cater-
pillar, paralysed with a single sting. Even
then that sting must not be given at random,
else the act would be more harmful than
profitable. Irritated, but not subdued by the
wound, the animal would but become more
dangerous. The dart must strike a nerve-
centre, probably in the middle region of the
string of ganglia. This, at any rate, Is how
the present-day Ammophilae seem to go
to work when they are addicted to the rape
of frail and slender grubs. What chance
would the operator have of striking that one
particular point, If her lancet were wielded
without method? The probability is ludi-
crously remote : it is as one to the count-
less number of points whereof the caterpil-
lar's body is made up. And yet, according to
the theorists, it is on this probability that the
Wasp's future depends. What an edifice to
balance on the point of a needle!

Let us go on admitting and continue.
The desired point is struck; the prey is duly
paralysed; the egg laid on its flank will de-
velop in safety. Is that enough? It is at
most but a half of what is absolutely neces-
sary. Another egg is indispensable to com-
plete the future couple and ensure offspring.
407

The Hunting Wasps

Therefore, within a few days', within a few
hours' interval, a second sting must be given,
as successful as the first. In other words,
the impossible has to be repeated, the impos-
sible raised to the second degree.

Let us not be discouraged yet; let us sound
the uttermost depths of the problem. Here
is a Wasp, some precursor, no matter which,
of our Ammophila, who, favoured by chance,
has twice and perhaps oftener succeeded in
reducing the prey to that state of inertia
which the rearing of the egg imperatively de-
mands. She does not know, does not sus-
pect that she inserted her sting opposite a
nerve-centre rather than any elsewhere. x'\s
there was nothing to prompt her choice, she
acted at random. Nevertheless, if we are to
take the theory of instinct seriously, we shall
have to admit that this fortuitous action,
though a matter of indifference to the insect,
left a lasting trace and made so great an im-
pression that, henceforth, the cunning strat-
agem which produces paralysis by attacking
the nervous centres is transmissible by he-
redity. The Ammophila's successors, by
some prodigious privilege, will inherit what
the mother did not possess. They will know
by instinct the point or points towards which
408

The Modern Theory of Instinct

the sting must be directed; for, if they were
still in the prentice stage, if they and their
successors had to risk the chance that acci-
dent would tend gradually to strengthen the
nascent impulse, they would be going back to
the likelihood so near allied to nil; they
would go back to it year by year, for centuries
to come; and yet the one and only fa-
vourable chance would have to be always re-
curring. I find it very difficult to believe in
a habit acquired by this prolonged repetition
of incidents whereof not one can take place
without excluding so many contrary chances.
It is a simple matter of arithmetic to show
the number of absurdities against which the
theorists rush headlong.

Nor is this all. We should have to ask
ourselves how casual actions, to which the
insect was not predisposed by nature, can be-
come the source of an hereditary transmis-
sible habit. We should look upon a man as
a sorry wag who came to us and said that
the descendant of the desnucador knows the
art of slaughtering cattle from A to Z merely
through being the son of his father, without
the aid of precept or example. The father
does not use his blade just once or twice, by
accident; he operates every day and scores
409

The Hunting Wasps

of times a day; he goes to work with reflec-
tion. It is his business. Does this hfelong
practice create a transmissible habit? Are
the sons, the grandsons, the great-grandsons
any the wiser, without instruction? No, the
thing has to start afresh each time. Man is
not predisposed by nature to this butchery.
If, on her side, the Wasp excels in her art,
it is because she is born to follow it, because
she is endowed not only with tools, but also
with the knack of using them. And this gift
is original, perfect from the outset: the past
has added nothing to it, the future will add
nothing to it. As it was, so it is and will be.
If you see in it naught but an acquired habit,
which heredity hands down and improves, at
least explain to us why man, who represents
the highest stage in the evolution of your
primitive plasma, is deprived of the like privi-
lege. A paltry insect bequeathes its skill to
its offspring; and man cannot. What an im-
mense advantage it would be to humanity if
we were less liable to see the worker suc-
ceeded by the idler, the man of talent by the
idiot! Ah, why has not protoplasm, evol-
ving by its own energy from one being Into
another, reserved until it came to us a little
of that wonderful power which it has be-
410

The Modern Theory of Instinct

stowed so lavishly upon the insects ! The
answer is that apparently, in this world, cellu-
lar evolution is not everything.

For these among many other reasons, I re-
ject the modern theory of instinct. I see in
it no more than an ingenious game in which
the arm-chair naturalist, the man who shapes
the world according to his whim, is able to
take delight, but in which the observer, the
man grappling with reality, fails to find a
serious explanation of anything whatsoever
that he sees. In my own surroundings, I no-
tice that those who are most positive in the
matter of these difficult questions are those
who have seen the least. If they have seen
nothing at all, they go to the length of rash-
ness. The others, the timid ones, know
more or less what they are talking about.
And is it not the same outside my modest
environment ?

411

APPENDIX

The following Wasps appear to me to be
new to our fauna. I give a description of
each of them.

CERCERIS ANTONIiE — H. Fab.

Length, i6 to i8 millimetres.^ Black,
thickly and deeply spotted. Shield, raised
like a nose, that is to say, forming a convex
projection, broad at the base, pointed at the
tip and resembling one half of a cone divided
lengthwise. Prominent crest between the
antennae. A yellow streak above the crest,
yellow cheeks and a large yellow spot behind
each eye. Yellow shield, with black dot.
Mandibles, iron-yellow, with black tips.
First four or five joints of the antennae, iron-
yellow; the rest brown.

Two dots on the prothorax, the wing-
scales and the postscutellum yellow. First
segment of the abdomen has two round spots.

^1 to i inch. — Translator's Note.
413

Appendix

The next four segments have on their hinder
edge a yellow band cut deeply into the form
of a triangle, or even broken right off; and
this is more noticeable in the less distant seg-
ments.

Under-part of the body, black. Legs,
iron-yellow all through. Wings, slightly
bronzed at the tip.

The above is a description of the female.
The male is unknown to me.

In colouring, this species approaches Cer-
certs labiata, from which it differs more par-
ticularly by the shape of the shield and by its
size, which is much larger. Observed near
Avignon in July.

I dedicate this species to my daughter An-
tonia, whose assistance has often been of
great value to me in my entomological re-
searches.

B

CERCERIS JULIL— H. Fab.

Length, 7 to 9 millimetres.^ Black, thickly
and deeply spotted. Shield, flat. Face cov-
ered with a fine silvery down. A narrow

'i to J 'mc\i.-~- Translator's Note.
414

Appendix

yellow band on either side on the inner edge
of the eyes. Mandibles, yellow, with brown
tips. Antennae, black above, pale russet
below; lower surface of their basilar joints,
yellow.

On the prothorax two small yellow dots,
some distance apart; yellow wing-scales and
postscutellum. A yellow band on the third
segment of the abdomen and another on the
fifth segment; these two bands are deeply
hollowed on the fore-edge, the first into a
semicircle, the second into a triangle.

Under-part of the body, entirely black.
Black hips; thighs of the hind-legs, all black;
those of the two front pairs, black at the root
and yellow at the end. Legs and tarsi, yel-
low. Wings slightly smoke-coloured.

Female.

Varieties: i. Prothorax without yellow
dots. 2. Two small yellow dots on the sec-
ond segment of the abdomen. 3. Wider yel-
low band on the inner side of the eyes. 4.
Front of shield edged yellow.

The male is unknown to me.

This Cerceris, the smallest in my district,

feeds her larvae on very small-sized Weevils,

Bruchiis gj'anar'ms and Apion gravidiim.

Observed near Carpentras, where she builds

415

Appendix

her nest in September, in the soft sandstone
locally known as safre.

BEMBEX JULIL— H. Fab.

Length, i8 to 20 millimetres.^ Black,
with bristling whitish hairs on the head, the
thorax and the base of the first segment of
the abdomen. Long upper lip, yellow.
Ridge-shaped shield, forming a sort of tri-
hedral angle, of which one side, that of the
fore-edge, is all yellow, while each of the
two others is marked with a large rectangular
black patch, touching the adjacent one, so
that the two together form a chevron; these
two patches and also the cheeks are covered
with a fine silvery down. Cheeks and a
median line between the antennae, yellow.
The back rim of the eyes has a long yellow
border. Yellow mandibles, brown at the
tips. First two joints of the antennae, yellow
underneath, black above; the others, yellow.
Prothorax, black, with its sides and dorsal
division yellow. Mesothorax, black; the
callous dot and a small dot on either side,

^i to i inch. — Translator's Note.
416

Appendix

above the base of the intermediate legs, yel-
low. Metathorax, black, with two yellow
spots behind and a larger one, on either side,
above the base of the hind-legs. The first
two spots are sometimes missing.

Abdomen, brilliant black above and bare,
except at the base of the first segment, which
bristles with whitish hairs. All the segments
have a wavy transversal band, wider at the
sides than in the middle and nearer to the
hinder edge as the segment is farther back.
On the fifth segment, the yellow band touches
the hinder edge. Anal segment, yellow,
black at the root, covered all over the dorsal
surface with rusty-red papillae, forming a base
for bristles. A row of similar bristle-bear-
ing protuberances occupies also the hinder
edge of the fifth segment. Underneath, the
abdomen Is brilliant black, with a triangular
yellow patch on either side of the four inter-
mediary segments.

Black hips; thighs, yellow in front, black
behind; yellow legs and tarsi. Transparent
wings.

In the male, the chevron mark on the shield

is narrower, or even entirely absent, in which

case the face is all yellow. The bands on the

abdomen are a very pale yellow, almost

417

Appendix

white. The sixth segment has a band like
those which come before, but shorter and
often reduced to two dots. The second seg-
ment has underneath it a longitudinal carina,
raised and spineshaped at the back. Lastly,
the anal segment carries below it a rather
thick angular projection. The rest is the
same as in the female.

This Wasp is very much like Bembex
rostrata in size and in the arrangement of the
black and yellow. The chief differences lie
in the following characteristics: the shield of
Bembex Julii forms a trihedral angle, whereas
it is rounded and convex in the other Bembex.
It also has at its base a broad, chevron-
shaped black band, formed of two rect-
angular patches joined together and pow-
dered with a silvery down, which is very bril-
liant in a suitable light. The upper surface
of the anal segment bristles with papillae and
reddish hairs, as does the hinder edge of the
fifth segment. Lastly, the mandibles are
stained black at the tips only, whereas the
base also is black in Bembex rostrata. Their
habits are equally dissimilar. Bembex
rostrata hunts Gad-flies mainly; Bembex Julii
never preys on big Flies but attacks smaller
ones of greatly varying species.
418

Appendix

Jules' Bembex is frequent in the sandy soil
of Les Angles, round about Avignon and on
the hill at Orange.

D

AMMOPHILA JULII.— H. Fab.

Length, i6 to 22 millimetres.^ Abdominal
petiole consisting of the first segment and
half the second. Third cubital narrowed
towards the radial. Head, black, with sil-
very down on the face. Antennae, black.
Thorax, black, with transverse stripes on its
three segments, darker on the prothorax and
the mesothorax. Two patches on the sides
and one behind either side of the metathorax,
covered with silvery down. Abdomen, bare
and shiny. First segment, black. Second
segment, red in the part narrowed into a
petiole and in the widened part. Third seg-
ment, all red. The others, a beautiful,
metallic indigo-blue. Legs, black, with sil-
very down on the hips. Wings, slightly red-
dish. Builds her nest in October and stocks
each cell with two medium-sized caterpillars.
Is nearly related to Ammophila holo-

^.62 to .86 inch. — Translator's Note.
419

Appendix

sericea, being of the same size, but differs
markedly In the colour of her legs, which are
all black, in her head and thorax, which are
much less hairy, and in the transverse stripes
on the three segments of the thorax.

I wish these three Wasps to bear the name
of my son Jules, to whom I dedicate them.

Dear Jules, snatched at such an early age
from your passionate love of flowers and
insects, you were my fellow-worker; nothing
escaped your clear-sighted glance ; I was to
write this book for you, to whom Its stories
gave such delight; and you yourself were to
continue It one day. Alas, you went to a
happier home, knowing nothing of the book
but Its first lines! May your name at least
figure In It, borne by some of those Industrious
and beautiful Wasps whom you loved so
well!

J. H. F.
Orange, 3 April 1879.

420

INDEX

Acridian {see Locust)
African Sphex, n8
Ammophila {see also the

varieties below), loo,

200, 250-271, 295-296, 301,

322-323, 331
Ammophila argentata {see

Silvery Ammophila)
Ammophila hirsuta {see

Hairy Ammophila)
Ammophila holosericea {see

Silky Ammophila)
Ammophila Julii, 419-420
Ammophila sabulosa {see

Sandy Ammophila)
Ant, 210, 242-243
Anthrax {see also Anthrax

flava), 292
Anthrax flava, 291
Aphis {see Plant-louse)
Apion gravidum, 28-29, 415
Asidae, 55

B

Bacon-beetle {see Der-

mestes)
Badger, 356
Bat {see also Horseshoe

Bat), 379
BeccaHco, 242

Bee {see also Hive-bee), 2,

240
Bee-eating Philanthus {see

Philanthus apivorus)
Bee-fly {see Bombylius)
Beetle, 2, 17, 24, 34, 42-61
Bembex {see also the

varieties below), 148,

239, 250, 272-331, 338-

35°, 405

Bembex bidentata {see
Two-pronged Bembex)

Bembex Julii, 286-289, 292,
416-419

Bembex oculata, 289-291

Bembex olivacea, 291

Bembex rostrata {see Ros-
trate Bembex)

Bembex tarsata, 291-292,
305-306

Bernard Claude, 45-49, 51

Black-fly, 249

Black Tachytes, 73-75

Blanchard Emile, 52

Bluebottle, 291

Bombylius {see also Bom-
bylius nitidulus), 281,
287, 293-293, 297, 305-
306

Bombylius nitidulus, 291-
292

Bothynoderus albidus, 27

Brachyderes gracilis, 28

421

Index

Bronze Buprestis, 55
Bruchus granarius, 29, 415
Bug, 120
Bullock {see Ox)
Bunting, 235, 238
Buprestis {see also the

varieties below), 2, 4, 7-9,

11-18, 29,45, 52-53. 55-57,

59, 61, 71, 107, 122, 262,

299, 405-406
Buprestis biguttata, gn, 12
Buprestis chrysostigma, 9«
Buprestis fasciata, 4-7, <)n
Buprestis flavomaculata, gn
Buprestis-hunting Cerceris,

1-20, 26-27, 71
Buprestis micans, gn, 12
Buprestis novemmaculata,

9«
Buprestis octoguttata, gn, 12
Buprestis pruni, gn
Buprestis tarda, gn
Burying-beetle {see Ne-

crophorus)
Bush-pipit, 243-244
Butterfly, 2, 243

Calathus, 59

Calliphora vomitoria {see
Bluebottle)

Carabus, 55, 391

Carrion-beetle {see Silpha)

Carrier-pigeon, 336-337

Cat, 309

Caterpillar {see also Grey
Worm, Looper), 100, 179,
267-268, 296, 301

Cellar-beetle, 34, 55

Cerceris {see also the va-
rieties below), 42-61, 90,

122, 148, 151, 163, 167,
239, 294-296, 301, 323, 347

Cerceris Antonia, 413-414

Cerceris arenaria, 28

Cerceris aurata, 28

Cerceris bupresticida {see
Buprestis-hunting Cer-
ceris)

Cerceris Ferreri, 28

Cerceris Julii, 29, 414-416

Cerceris labiata, 29

Cerceris major {see Great
Cerceris)

Cerceris ornata, 29

Cerceris quadracincta, 28

Cerceris tuberculata {see
Great Cerceris)

Chafer {see Scarab)

Chlaenius, 55, 59

Chlorion {see Compressed
Chlorion)

Cicada, 113, 272

Cleonus {see also the va-
rieties below), 332

Cleonus alternans, 26

Cleonus ophthalmicus, 24-
27. 36-41, 55, 86

Clytia pellucens, 292

Cneorenus hispidus, 28

Coccinella sepiempunctata
{see Seven-spot Lady-
bird)

Cockchafer, 382-391

Cockroach {see also Kaker-
lak), ii5«

Codfish, 15

Common Fly {see Fly,
House-fly)

Common Wasp {see Social
Wasp)

Common Wheat-ear {see
Wheat-ear)

422

Index

Compressed Chlorion, 119-

I20

Couty, L., 394

Crabro {see also Hornet),
129-130

Crayfish, 391

Crkou {see Shore-lark)

Crested Lark, 245-246

Cricket, 58, 65, 68-87, 89,
92-101, 114-116, 120-123,
125, 167-168, 170, 179-
180, 206, 208-210, 235,
238, 243, 250, 263, 296,
301, 405

Cuckoo, 315

D

Dart Moth {see Turnip
Moth)

Darwin, Charles Robert,
126

Darwin, Erasmus, 126-130,
137-138

Delacour, Th., 223, 228

Dermestes, 374, 376

Dexta rustica, 292

Dog, 270, 375-376

Double-lined Buprestis, 18

Drone-fly {see Eristalis)

Dryden, John, 133^, 390^

Dufour, Leon, 2-14, 16-17,
19, 26-27, 30, 35, 45-46, 71

Dung-beetle {see also Sa-
cred Scarab, Wide-necked
Scarab)

Earwig, 115^, 243
Echonomyia intermedia,

287, 291, 293
Echonomyia rubescens, 286-

287, 293

Eel, 356

Ephippiger {see also Ephip-
piger of the Vine), 92-
94. "5. 118, 120-121, 147-
148, 151, 153-187, 262,
301, 389

Ephippiger of the Vine,
147-148

Eristalis {see also the va-
rieties below), 281, 288-
289, 296

Eristalis ceneus, 292

Eristalis sepulchralis, 292

Eristalis tenax, 132-137,
288, 290

Eyed Lizard, 152, 356

Fabre, fimile, the author's
son, 177-180

Fabre, Mile. Aglae, the au-
thor's daughter, 363, 366

Fabre, Mile. Antonia, the
author's daughter, 414

Fabre, Mile. Claire, the au-
thor's daughter, 363, 366

Fabre, Jules, the author's
son, 420

Favier, the author's facto-
tum, 351-359, 362-363,
366

Flesh-fly {see Sarcophaga)

Flourens, Marie Jean
Pierre, 45-49, 176, 197

Fly {see also House-fly),
127-132, 148, 210, 250,
276, 282, 284, 286, 288-
292, 295-301, 346, 348,
357. 418

Fox, 356

423

Index

Gad-fly, 290-293, 296-297,

302-304, 309, 405, 418
Geometrid Moth, 26on
Geonemus ftabelUpes, 28
Geron gibbosus, 291
Gnat {see also Tachina,

Miltogramma), 72
Golden Apple-beetle, 243
Gonia atra, 287, 293
Goshawk, 301
Grasset {see Bush-Pipit)
Grasshopper {see also

Ephippiger), ii5«, 250,

296, 405
Great Cerceris, 19-41. 69,

80, 84-86, 10s, 149. 332-

337 . „ „
Greenbottle, 280-281, 291-

292

Green-fly, 249

Grey Lizard, 239

Grey Worm, 268, 270, 361-
373. 375. 377. 381-384,
386-389, 396, 398, 400-408

Ground-beetle (see also
Calathus, Carabus, ChU-
nius, Nebria, Procrustes,
Sphodrus), 2, 55, 59. 107

H

Hairy Ammophila, 222,
233, 241, 246-247, 251,
253, 259, 267-271, 359-
390, 396, 398-410

Helophilus tnvittatus, 292

Herring, 15

Hister, 52, 374, 37^

Hive-bee, 89-91, 132-134.
191-192, 233, 384, 401

Hornet, 134, 136-137
Horseshoe Bat, 379
House-fly, 131, 288-291

Inchworm {see Looper)
Infusoria, 376

Jules' Bembex {see Bembex
Julii)

Jules' Cerceris {see Cer-
ceris Julii)

K

Kakerlak, 119-120

L

Lacordaire, Jean Theodore,
1^6-127

Ladybird {see Seven-spot
Ladybird)

Lamia, 34, 55

Languedocian Sphex, 92-93,
115, 117-118, 121, 139-211,
234, 255. 264, 389

Lark {see also Crested
Lark, Shore-lark, Sky-
lark, Tit-lark), 134
Latreille, Pierre Andre, 10,

116
Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau,
Amedee Corate, 118, 125,

313
Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau,

Felix, ii8n
Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau,

Louis Michel, ii8n
Linnaeus, 63

424

Index

Linnet, 391

Lizard {see also Eyed Liz-
ard, Grey Lizard), 114

Locust, 92, 94, 115-116, 119-
121, 123-126, 203-207,
242-243, 250, 262, 356, 405

Longicornes {see also
Lamia, Saperda), 55, 59

Looper, 260, 265, 267

Louse {see Plant-louse)

Lucilia Casar {see Green-
bottle)

M

Macmillan & Co., Ltd., vii
Mademoiselle Mori, au-
thor of, vii, 55n
Magendie, Franqois, 45-49
Maia {see Spider-crab)
Mammoth, 397
Mantis, Mantis religiosa

{see Praying Mantis)
Martial, 242
Martin, 249
Meade - Waldo, Geoffrey,

viii
Measuring - w o r m {see

Looper)
Melasoma-beetle {see also

Asidae, Cellar-beetle,

Scaurus), 55, 59
Merodon spinipes, 292
Miall, Bernard, 90
Midge {see Gnat, Milto-

gramma)
Millipede, 243
Miltogramma, 309-322
Mimic-beetle {see Hister)
Mole, 374
Moth, 261-262
Mouse, 309

Musca domestica
House-fly)

N

{see

Nebria, 55, 59
Necrophorus, 373-374
Noctua segetum {see Tur-
nip Moth)

O

Ones'ta viarum, 289, 291
Ophthalmic Cleonus {see

Cleonus ophthalmicus)
Otiorhyncus maleficus, 28
Otiorhyncus raucus, 28
Owl, 244-245
Ox, IS, 121, 309, 39**398

Palarus, 90, 324
Papilio machaon {see

Swallowtail)
Philanthus {see Philanthus

apivorus)
Philanthus apivorus, 90,
149, 191-1921 239, 323,
347
Phynotomus murinus, 28-

29
Phynotomus punctatus, 28
Pigeon {see Carrier-pi-
geon)
Pipiza ni grip ens, zgi
Plant-louse, 248, 383
Polistes gallica, 132
Pollenia floralis, 287, 292
Pollenia rudis, 291
Pollenia rufescens, 287
Pollenia ruficollis, 291, 293

425

Index

Praying Mantis, 113,

189-192, 405
Procrustes, 55

Rabbit, 270, 273-274., 358
Racine, Jean, 390^
Racine, Louis, 390-391
Rassade {see Eyed Lizard)
Reindeer, 397

Rhinolophus {see Horse-
shoe Bat)
Rodwell, Miss Frances, vii
Rostrate Bembex, 274-281,
290, 292, 418

Sacred Beetle, 55-56, 59,

155-156, 269
Sacred Scarab {see Sacred

Beetle)
Sandy Ammophila, 237,

251, 253-255, 259, 261,

267-268
Saperda, 34, 55
Sarcophaga {see also Sar-

cophaga agricola), 288
Sarcophaga agricola, 289,

291
Sardine, 15
Scarab {see also Sacred

Beetle), 52, 55-57, 299
Scarabaus {see Scarab)
Scaurus, 55
Scolia, 90, 322
Scolytus, 52

Sea-spider {see Spider-
crab)
Sea-urchin, 351, 354-355
Seven-spot Ladybird, 247-

H9

ii5n, Sheep, 15, 121

Shore-lark, 242

Shrike {see Lesser Grey
Shrike)

Silk Moth, 384

Silkworm, 384

Silky Ammophila, 251, 253,
259-260, 265, 268, 419-
420

Silpha, 373, 376

Silvery Ammophila, 237,
251, 254-255, 259, 268

S'ttona lineata, 28

Sitona tibialis, 28

Skylark, 244-246

Snail, 243

Snake, 356

Social Bee {see Hive-bee)

Social Wasp, 90-91, 130-
137, 256, 401

Spallanzani, Lazaro, 379

Spanworm {see Looper)

Sparrow, 132

Sparrow-hawk, 134, 315

Sphaerophoria {see also
Spharophoria scripta),
281, 291-292, 297, 300

Spharophoria scripta, 289-
291

Sphenoptera geminata, S.
lineola {see Double-
lined Buprestis)

Sphex {see also the varie-
ties below), 61-211, 239,
250, 262-263, 295-296,
301, 322-323. 405

Sphex afra {see African
Sphex)

Sphex albisecta {see
White-edged Sphex)

Sphex flavipennis {see
Yellow-winged Sphex)

426

Index

Sphex occ'itan'ica {see

Languedocian Sphex)
Spider, 243
Spider-crab, 353-354
Sphodrus, 55
Spurge Hawk-moth, 179
Stag-beetle, 391
Starling, 351
Stizus {see also Stizus

ruficornis), 324
Stizus ruficornis, 405
Stomoxys {see also Stom-

oxys calcitrans), 281, 293
Stomoxys calcitrans, 291
Surveyor {see Looper)
Swallow, 249
Swallowtail, 2-3
Syrphus {see also Syrphus

corolla), 296
Syrphus corolla, 287, 291-

293

Tabanus, 292

Tachina {see also Milto-
gramma), 72

Tachytes nigra {see Black
Tachytes)

Tachytes obsoleta, 75

Tachytes tarsina, 76

Tarsal Bembex {see Bern-
hex tarsata)

Teixeira de Mattos, Alex-
ander, zn, 55n, i26«, zion

Tit-lark, 245

Tortoise-beetle, 243

Triboulet, 216, 221

Turnip Motli, 381

Two-pronged Bembex, 290,
292

Verlot, Bernard, 225-228
Vespa crabro {see Hornet)
Vespa vulgaris {see Social

Wasp)
Virgil, 133, 390

W

Wagtail {see White Wag-
tail)

Warbler, 315

Wasp {see Social Wasp)

Weevil {see also Cleonus),
24, 27-41, 52-53, 55, 57,
59, 61, 84, 86, 122, 148,
163, 242-244, 262, 299,
301, 333, 405-406

Wheat-ear, 242-243

Whin-chat, 242

White-edged Sphex, 75, 92,
115, 119, 121, 168, 203-
208

White-tail {see Wheat-ear)

White Wagtail, 244

White worm, 382

Wide-necked Scarab, 55

Wood-louse, 243

Yellow-winged Sphex, 58,
61-115, 119, 121-125, 145,
159, 161, 168, 170, 206,
208-211

Zodion notatum, 292

427

i/^

Fabre, Jean Henri GasLnir

AUTHOR

The hunting wasps.

TITLE

^ A Ml tji *~^r\

LIBRARY,

National Geographic Society,
Washington, D. C.

Zoology (Inv.): Insects

,C.1 .lib.text