More Hunting Wasps

lator's Note.), prey exclusively on the Weevils and the Buprestes, that is, on the families whose nervous system presents a degree of concentration which may be compared with

sense of sight; but their surgery is confronted

ay comply with the conditions imposed: the result of stinging them would be merely a partial disorder which far from subduing the insect, would render it more dangerous by irritating it yet further.

a. The success of the paralysis, therefore, demands that the motor ganglia, at least the three thoracic ganglia, shall be packed in

e anatomical secrets of her victim, knows to perfection where the centres of innervation lie; and she wounds them one after another, if need be from the first t

Only the tactics of the paralysers of armour-clad insects are practicable now, for, since there is but one thrust of the dagger, the feat of surgery is reduced to its simplest terms, a necessary consequence of the difficulties of an underground operation. The Scoliae, then, whose destiny it is

mathematical point at which the sting must enter to produce a sudden and a lasting immobility; before they learnt how to consume, without incu

ngs eventually hit upon the most favourable combination, a combination henceforth to be perpetuated by hereditar

s its way; there is nothing settled about its preferences. To feed its carnivorous larvae it levies tribute on every species of game which is not too much for the huntress' power or the nurseling's app

change it: animals have not the gastronomic fancies of an epicure whom satiety makes difficult to please. Because the race did well upon this fare, it became habitual; and instinct became differently fixed from what it is

and branching out into races each of which has become a species with the attributes which distinguish it to-day. The precursor is the deus ex machina of evolution. When the difficulty becomes altogether too importunate, quick, a precursor, to fill up the gaps, quick, an imaginary

succulent morsels on which to rear their families. By degrees the indeterminate Wasp adopted the sturdy proportions demanded by underground labour. By degrees she learnt to stab her plump neighbours in scientific fashion; by degrees she acquired the diff

not insist further upon the insurmountable objection; we will admit that, amid so many unfavourable chances, a few favoured individuals survive, becoming more and more numerous from one generation to the next, in

ement. But if, so far from being satisfied with hazy generalities and adopting as current coin the terms consecrated by fashion, we have the perseverance to explore the truth as far as lies in our power, the aspect of things will undergo a great change and we shall discover that th

Knowing nothing, he generalizes in the highest degree; he simplifies, in his inability to perceive the complex. Later he will learn that the Sparrow is not the Bullfinch, that the Linnet is not the Greenfinch; he will particulari

when we chat about animals, from making the most crazy assertions. For him the Bat is a Rat that has grown wings; the Cuckoo is a Sparrow-hawk retired from business; the Slug is a Snail who has lost his shell with the advance of years; the Nightjar (Known also as the Goatsucker, because of the mistaken belief that the bird sucks the milk of Goats, and, in America, as the Whippoorwill.-Translator's Note.), the Chaoucho-grapaou, as he calls her, is an

the res

ll seriousness that, in the present stage of scientific knowledge, it is absolutely proved that man is descended from some rough-hewn Ape? Of the two transformations, Favier's strikes me as the more credible. A painter of my acq

por et lou defero d'uno mounino." "See, my dear friend, see

cover man's origin in the Hog when the Ape has gone out of fashio

lou dintre

, for, when all is said, the animal, in its widest generalization, is represented by a digestive tube. With this common factor, the way lies open to every kind of error. A machine is judged not by this or that train of wheels, but by the nature of the work accomplished. The monumental roasting-jack of a waggoners' inn and a Bregue

out exalting ourselves as high as the famous reed of which Pascal speaks, that reed which, in its weakness, by the mere fact that it knows itself to be crushed, is superior to the world that crushes it, we may at least ask to be shown, somewhere, an animal making an implement, which will multiply its skill and its strength, or taking possession of fire, the primor

settle how the original brute became the possessor of implements and fire. Aptitudes are more important than hair; and you neglect them because it is there that the insurmountable difficulty really resides. See how the great master of evolution hesitates and stammers when he tries, by fair means or

ing circumstances, is supposed to have subdivided herself into ramifications, one of which, digging into vegetable mould and preferring the Cetonia to any other game inhabiting the same heap, became the Two-banded Scolia; another, also addicted to exploring the soil, but selecting the Oryctes, left as its descendant the Ga

ifficulties, which are extremely grave if considered one by one and are aggravated even more by this circumstance, that the overcoming of one would lead to nothing unless the others were surmounted as successfully.

the concentration of their nervous systems, form so remarkable and so rare an exception in the insect order? What chance would hazard offer her of obtaining this prey, the m

restricted and hidden in the folds of the larva's body. If she miscalculates, she may be killed: the larva, irritated by the smarting puncture, is strong enough to disembowel her with the tusks of its mandibles. If she escapes the danger, she will nevertheless perish without leaving any offspring, since the necessary provisions will be lacking. Salvation for herself and h

rce the skin of its provender at the very spot on which the egg was fixed; and, once an opening is made, it will go ahead without hesitation. If this point of attack is ill-chosen, the nurseling runs the risk of presently finding under its mandibles some essential

ed in the more delicate questions of anatomy and entomological physiology. What I do know with absolute certainty is that the same spot is invariably chosen for laying the egg. With not a single exception,

ame because it is that most favourable to successful rearing? A very small point, represented by the ratio of two o

f to repletion. If it bite at random, if it have no other guide in the selection of tit-bits than the preference of the moment and the violence of an imperious appetite, it will infallib

marks the end of life for the Cetonia, but it also marks the end of the Scolia's feasting. If the grub be a novice in the art of eating, if no special instinct guide its mandibles in the belly of the pre

a-grub, for instance; but this will go for nothing unless she direct her sting towards the only vulnerable point. She may know the whole secret of the art of stabbing her victim, but this means nothing if she does not k

hat complex chance whose factors are four infinitely improbable occurrences, one might almost say four impossibilit

us pentodon. Their internal structure is very nearly similar; their food is the same, consisting of decomposing vegetable matter; their habits are identical: they live underground in tunnels which are frequently renewed; they make a rough egg-shaped cocoon of earthy materials. Environment

ure that turns itself upside down in order to walk with its belly in the air and never adopts any other method of locomotion, though it possesses legs and good legs at that, assure

plies the tip of its belly to one wall of its gallery and its sturdy back to another; and the combined effort of these two levers results in moving it forward. The legs, which are used very little, indeed hardly at all, waste away and tend to disappear, as does any organ which is left unemployed; the back, on the other hand, the pri

n their backs? In their galleries they follow the chimney-sweep's methods quite as cleverly as the Cetonia-grub; to move forward they make valiant use of their backs without yet having come to ambling with their bellies in the air. Can they have neglected to accommodate thems

le: why has the tiger a coat streaked black and yellow? A matter of environment, replies one of our evolutionary masters. Ambushed in bamboo thickets where the golden radiance of the sun is intersected by stripes

le, in a solemn and magisterial manner, as the last word in science! Toussenel, in his day, asked the naturalists an insidious question. (Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885), the author of a number of learned and curious works on ornithology.-Translator's Note.) Why, he enquired, have

ronment does not make the animal; it is the animal that is made for the environment. To this simple phi

est is that I