More Hunting Wasps

er of the grub should be provided with prey is natural enough; but that the provider, whose diet is honey, should herself make use of the captives is anything

f Chrysomela populi, the Poplar Leaf-beetle.-Translator's Note.) distils at the end of its intestine. This fluid no doubt represents to her some highly-flavoured beverage with which she seasons from time to time the staple diet fetched from the drinking-bar of the flowers, some appetizing condiment or perhaps-who knows?-some substitute for honey. Thoug

s procedure to have many imitators; it is a secondary detail and impracticable with a different kind of game. But there is sure to be a certain variety in the direct means of utilizing the capture. Why, for instance, when the victim paralysed by the sting contains a delic

e suggested: I wanted to study, with all the leisure of work done at home, the operating-methods employed by the different Hunting Wasps. I therefore made use, for the Philanthus, of the process of experimenting under glass which I roughly outlined when speaking of the Odynerus. It was even the Bee-huntress who gave me my first data in this direction. She responded to my wishes with such zeal that I believed myself to possess an unequalled means of observing again and again, even to excess, what is so difficult to achieve on the actual spot. Alas, the first-fruits

n; and the spoiler begins to notice her surroundings. The antennae are pointed forwards, enquiringly; the hind-legs are drawn up with a little quiver of greed in the tarsi; the head turns to right and left and follows the evolutions of the Bees against t

ack; and the Philanthus, belly to belly with her, grips her with her six legs while snapping at her neck with her mandibles. The abdomen is now curved forward from behind, along the prostrate victim, feels with its tip, gropes about a little and ends by reac

thing a position suited to receive the dagger-stroke, she turns her round and back again with the rough clumsiness of a child handling its doll. Her pose is magnificent to look at. Solidly planted on her sustaining tripod, the two hind

ould dare to confess. Without a single exception, I have always seen the Bee stung in the throat. In the preparations for the final blow, the tip of the abdomen may well come to rest on this or that point of the thorax or abdomen; but it does not stop at any

point, which would necessarily determine the thrust of the lancet? Should any one entertain so petty a thought, I advise him to open the articulation of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs. He will there see what I see: the bare skin, quite as fine as under the neck, but covering a much larger surface. The horny breast-plate offers no wider breach. If the Philanthus were guided in her operation solely by the question of vulnerab

been accustomed in my old studies of insect paralysis: the antennary threads waving slowly to and fro, the palpi quivering, the mandibles opening and closing for days, weeks and months on end. At most, the tarsi tremble for a minute or two; that constitutes the whole death-struggle. Complete im

instantaneous. Had the Philanthus' object been simply to effect paralysis, the suppression of locomotor movements, she would have driven her weapon into the flaw in the corselet, as the Cerceres do with the Weevils, who are much more powerfully armoured than the Be

In this posture all that she need do is to curve her abdomen in order to reach the gap in the neck and plunge the sting with an upward slant into her captive's head. Suppose the two insects to be gripping each other in the reverse attitude, imagine the dirk to slant slightly in the opposite

es the Philanthus has been storing her away in her cellars; and the poor innocent meekly submits, without being taught by the annual extermination of her race how to deliver herself from the aggressor by a well-aimed thrust. I despair of ever understanding how the assailant has acquired her talent for inflicting sudden death, when the assailed, who is better-a

ze cover has passed, the Bee seems hardly to trouble about her formidable neighbour. I see one side by side with the Philanthus on the same honeyed thistle-head: assassin and future victim are drinking from the same flask. I see some one who comes heedlessly to enquire who that stranger can be, crouching in wait on the table. When the spoiler makes her rush, it is usually at a Bee who meets her half-way, and, so to speak, flings herself into her clutches, either thoughtlessly or out of curiosity. Th

erious results. The manner in which the two combatants are at grips has this effect, that the Philanthus' abdomen is inside and the Bee's outside. The latter's sting therefore finds under its point only the dorsal surface of the foe, a convex, slipp

re vulnerable than the other, is within reach of the sting. Now the deceased still retains the reflex use of her weapon for a few minutes, as I learnt to my cost. Having taken the Bee too early from the bandit and handling her without suspecting any risk, I received a most downright

? It was certainly not the excitable but pacific Drone-fly; it was one of the Bees, who struck home by accident during the thick of the fight. Where and how? I cannot tell. The incident occurs only once in my notes, but it throws a light upon the question. The Bee is capable of withstanding her adversary; she can then and there slay her would-be slayer with a thrust of the sting. That she does not defend herself to better purpose, when s

k, sometimes also in the larger articulation of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs, an articulation of whose delicate membrane she is perfectly well aware, even though, when using her sting, she did not take advantage of this point, which is the most readily accessible of all. I see her rough-handling the Bee's belly, squeezing it against her own

neck and thorax, subjecting the honey-bag to the renewed pressure of her abdomen. The syrup comes and is instantly lapped up and lapped up again. In this way the contents of the crop are exhausted in small mouthfuls, yielded one at a time. This odious meal at the expense of a corpse's stomach is taken in a sybaritic attitude; the Philanthus lies on her side with the Bee bet

satisfying the bandit. I offer a fourth and a fifth. They are all accepted. My notes mention one Philanthus who in front of my eyes sacrificed six Bees in succession and squeezed out their crops in the regulation manner. The slaughter came to an end not because the glutton was sated but because my functions as a purveyor we

rs. The males even, possessing no lancet, know no other manner of refreshment. The mothers, without neglecting the table d'hote of the flowers, support themselves by brigandage as well. We are told of the Skua, that pirate of the seas, that he swoops down upon the fishing birds, at the moment when they rise from the water with a capture. With a blow of

ey-not always an easy thing-I have planted a few flower-spikes, a thistle-head or two, on which are placed drops of honey renewed at need. Here my captives come to take their meals. With the Philanthus, the provision of honeyed flowers, though favourably rece

a but a mere condiment, the aromatic juice of the rump; the other extracts from her victim an ample supplement to her victuals, the crop full of honey. What a hecatomb of Bees must

e larvae, without resorting to the murderous extirpation of the crop. She must, by able handling, by skilful pressure, make the Bee disgorge, she must milk her, in a manner of speaking. Suppose the Bee stung behind the corselet and paralysed. That deprives her of her power of locomotion, but not of her vitality. The digestive organs in particular retain or very nearly retain their normal energy, as is proved by the frequent excretions that take place in the paralysed prey, so long as the intestine is not empty, as is proved above all by the victims of the Languedocian Sphex (Cf. "The Hunting Wasp": chapters 8 to 10.-Translator's Note.), those helples

e. You see, therefore, that the Philanthus is expressly obliged to inflict a sudden death, which will do away at once with the elasticity of the organs. Where is the lightning stroke to b

es and emptying crops swollen with honey, this cannot be merely an alimentary resource, especially when, in common with the others, she has the banqueting-hall of the flowers. I cannot accept her atrocious talent as inspired merely by

ns, my gropings and my failures and will come straight to the results of my long investigation. Everything has its harmonious reason for existence. I am too fully persuaded of this to believe that the P

other hand, she wants to stow away the Bee as a provision for her larvae, she clasps her in her two intermediate legs and, walking on the other four, goes round and round the edge of the bell-glass, seeking for an outlet through which to fly off with her prey. When she recognizes the circular track as impossible, she climbs up the sides, this time holding the Bee by the antennae with her mandibles and clinging to the polished and perpendicular surfa

ipulated, squeezed, drained of their honey exactly as the others are. In all these respects, there is no difference be

, as it had already been settled by what had happened under glass. My tedious watches were rewarded from time to time. Most of the huntresses returned home immediately, with the Bee under their abdomen; some halted on the brambles hard by; and here I

of the Bembex, whose larva receives the necessary nourishment at intervals, as it grows larger. The facts confirm this deduction. Just now I described as tedious my watches near the colonies of the Philanthi. They were tedious in fact, even more so perhaps than those which the Bembeces used to inflict upon me in the old days. Outside the burrows of the Great Cerceris and othe

econd expedition. Two captures at most by the same huntress was all that I was able to see during my long vigils. Feeding from day to day involves this deliberation. Once the family is supplied with a sufficient ration for the moment, the mother suspends her

stronger but less expert hands than mine, are indispensable, for which reason the process of excavation is far from satisfying me fully. At the end of this long tunnel, which the s

it has no other support. It looks like a short club fixed by the end of the handle along the horizontal axis of the nest. Other cells contain the larva in a more or less advanced stage. The grub is munching the last morsel served to it, with the scraps of the victuals already consumed lying around it. Others lastly show me a Bee, one only, still unt

it daily; but cutting her throat in order to empty her stomach is going beyond a joke. And, as the Bees packed away in the cellar are squeezed dry just as much as the others, the thought occurs to my mind that a rumpsteak with jam is not to everybody's liking and that the game stuffed with honey might well be a distasteful or even unwholesome dish for the Philanthus' larvae. What will the grub

epted; and I at first see nothing that corresponds with my suspicions. Then my nurselings languish, disdain their food, give a careless bite here and there and end by perishing, from the first to the last, beside their unfinished victuals. All my attempts miscarry: I do

be that the atmosphere of my study and the dryness of the sand serving as a bed have had a bad effect on my charg

ly bitten into. If hesitation and lack of appetite are displayed at this stage, they come too late in the day to be conclusive: the larva's discomfort may be due to other, known or unknown, causes. The thing to do would be to offer the grub honey from the first, before artificial rearing has affected its appetite.

nes away on top of its almost intact provisions; then it dies. All that are subjected to this regimen succumb. Do they merely perish of inanition in the presence of an unaccustomed food, which revolts their appetite, or are they poisoned by the small quantity of honey absorbed with the early m

larvae when they have attained a medium size, to avoid the weakness of infancy; I take away the natural provisions, smear the carcases separately with honey and, when this is done, restore its victuals to each of the grubs. I had to make a choice: not every subject was equally suited to my experiments. I must reject the larvae wh

lia, consuming its Cetonia-grub, has taught us all that we want to know on this subject in my earlier volume. (Chapters 2 to 5 of the present volume contain the whole of the matter referred to above.-Translator's Note.) The only acceptable larvae are those supplied with a heap of small insects, which are attacked without any special art, dismembered at random and eaten up quickly. Among these I have tested such as chance threw in my way: those of various Bembeces, all

the insect's stomach to make the adult seek passionately what the youngster refused lest it should die? This is not a question of organic debility unable to endure a too substantial, too hard, too highly spiced dish. The grub that gnaws the Cetonia-larva, that generous piece of butcher's meat; the glutton that crunches its batch of tough Locusts; the one that battens

ch of Locusts to the larvae of the Anthophora or the Osmia, for instance. (For both these Wild Bees cf. "Bramble-bees and Others": passim.-Translator's Note.) The honey-fed insect would not bite into it. There would be no use whatever in trying. We must find the equivalent of t

oney with albumen, graduating the dose until its weight largely exceeds that of the flour. In this way I obtain pastes of different degrees of consistency, but all firm enough to bear

been altered by my culinary recipes. Everything goes down, including the morsels in which I feared that I had overdone the addition of albumen. And-an even more important point-the Osmia-larvae fed in this man

sein, another isomer of albumen. The gramnivorous nestling is first fed on grubs, which are better adapted to the niceties of its stomach; many of the minutest new-born creatures, being at once left to their own devices, take to animal food. In this way the original method of nourishment is continued for all alike: the method which allows flesh t

he note of interrogation is shifted. It stood elsewhere; it now stands here. Why is the Osmia, who as a larva fares so well on albumen

. But the struggle to fill the belly, which after all is the struggle for life, demands something better than the precarious hazards of the chase. Man, at first a ravenous hunter after game, brought the flock into existence and turned shepherd

nts do to this day: they devoured the deceased. From the beginning to the end they remained flesh-eaters. Later, fortunate innovators, whose race supplanted the laggards, discovered an inexhaustible nourishment, obtained without dangerous conflicts or laborious search: the sugary secretions of the flowers. The costly habit o

g an agriculturalist pure and simple, the insect attains a degree of physical and moral prosperity which the predatory species are far from sharing. Hence the flourishing colonies of the Anthophorae, the Osmiae, the Eucerae (A genus of long-

ihood which we should be glad to find in a host of evolutionist arguments put forward as irrefutable. Well, I will make a present of my deductive views

mischievous interpretations. Now that my eyes have been opened to the facts, I hasten to apologize and to restore the Philanthus to her place in my esteem. In draining the crops of her Bees the mother is performing the most praiseworthy of all actions: she is protecting her family against poison. If she happens to kill on her own account and to abandon the corpse after making it disgorge, I

disgorging must be effected without lacerating the victim, which the nurseling must receive in the fresh state; and the operation is impracticable on a paralysed insect because of the resistance of the stomach. The Bee must therefore be killed outright instead of being paralysed, or the honey will not be voided. Instantaneous death can be inflicted only by wounding the primordial centre of life. The sting must therefore

ensions, indifferently; the Ornate Cerceris (C. ornata, FAB.), another passionate lover of Halicti; and the Palarus (P. flavipes, FAB.), who, with a curious eclecticism, stacks in her cells the greater part of the Hymenopteron clan that does not exceed her powers. What do these four huntresses and the others of similar habits do with their victims whose c