The Gardener is prompt and businesslike in his affairs of the heart. In the midst of the crowd, with no preliminary courtship, the male throws himself upon the female. The female thus embraced raises her head a trifle as a sign of acquiescence, while the cavalier beats the back of her neck with his antennae. The embrace is brief, and they abruptly separate; after a little refreshment the two parties are ready for other adventures, and yet others, so long as there are males available. After the feast, a brief and primitive wooing; after the wooing, the feast; in such delights the life of the Gardener passes.

The females of my collection were in no proper ratio to the number of aspiring lovers; there were five females to twenty males. No matter; there was no rivalry, no hustling; all went peacefully and sooner or later each was satisfied.

I should have preferred a better proportioned assembly. Chance, not choice, had given me that at my disposal. In the early spring I had collected all the Gardeners I could find under the stones of the neighbourhood, without distinguishing the sexes, for they are not easy to recognise merely by external characteristics. Later on I learned by watching them that a slight excess of size was the distinctive sign of the female. My menagerie, so ill-proportioned in the matter of sex, was therefore the result of chance. I do not suppose this preponderance of males exists in natural conditions. On the other hand, one never sees such numerous groups at liberty, in the shelter of the same stone. The Gardener lives an almost solitary life; it is rarely that one finds two or three beneath the same object of shelter. The gathering in my menagerie was thus exceptional, although it did not lead to confusion. There is plenty of room in the glass cage for excursions to a distance and for all their habitual manoeuvres. Those who wish for solitude can obtain it; those who wish for company need not seek it.

For the rest, captivity cannot lie heavily on them; that is proved by their frequent feasts, their constant mating. They could not thrive better in the open; perhaps not so well, for food is less abundant under natural conditions. In the matter of well-being the prisoners are in a normal condition, favourable to the maintenance of their usual habits.

It is true that encounters of beetle with beetle are more frequent here than in the open. Hence, no doubt, arise more opportunities for the females to persecute the males whom they no longer require; to fall upon them from the rear and eviscerate them. This pursuit of their onetime lovers is aggravated by their confined quarters; but it certainly is not caused thereby, for such customs are not suddenly originated.

The mating season over, the female encountering a male in the open must evidently regard him as fair game, and devour him as the termination of the matrimonial rites. I have turned over many stones, but have never chanced upon this spectacle, but what has occurred in my menagerie is sufficient to convince me. What a world these beetles live in, where the matron devours her mate so soon as her fertility delivers her from the need of him! And how lightly the males must be regarded by custom, to be served in this manner!

Is this practice of post-matrimonial cannibalism a general custom in the insect world? For the moment, I can recollect only three characteristic examples: those of the Praying Mantis, the Golden Gardener, and the scorpion of Languedoc. An analogous yet less brutal practice—for the victim is defunct before he is eaten—is a characteristic of the Locust family. The female of the white-faced Decticus will eagerly devour the body of her dead mate, as will the Green Grasshopper.

To a certain extent this custom is excused by the nature of the insect's diet; the Decticus and the Grasshopper are essentially carnivorous. Encountering a dead body of their own species, a female will devour it, even if it be the body of her latest mate.

But what are we to say in palliation of the vegetarians? At the approach of the breeding season, before the eggs are laid, the Ephippigera turns upon her still living mate, disembowels him, and eats as much of him as her appetite will allow.

The cheerful Cricket shows herself in a new light at this season; she attacks the mate who lately wooed her with such impassioned serenades; she tears his wings, breaks his musical thighs, and even swallows a few mouthfuls of the instrumentalist. It is probable that this deadly aversion of the female for the male at the end of the mating season is fairly common, especially among the carnivorous insects. But what is the object of this atrocious custom? That is a question I shall not fail to answer when circumstances permit.



CHAPTER X

THE FIELD-CRICKET

The breeding of Crickets demands no particular preparations. A little patience is enough—patience, which according to Buffon is genius; but which I, more modestly, will call the superlative virtue of the observer. In April, May, or later we may establish isolated couples in ordinary flower-pots containing a layer of beaten earth. Their diet will consist of a leaf of lettuce renewed from time to time. The pot must be covered with a square of glass to prevent the escape of the inmates.

I have gathered some very curious data from these makeshift appliances, which may be used with and as a substitute for the cages of wire gauze, although the latter are preferable. We shall return to the point presently. For the moment let us watch the process of breeding, taking care that the critical hour does not escape us.

It was during the first week of June that my assiduous visits were at last repaid. I surprised the female motionless, with the oviduct planted vertically in the soil. Heedless of the indiscreet visitor, she remained for a long time stationed at the same point. Finally she withdrew her oviduct, and effaced, though without particular care, the traces of the hole in which her eggs were deposited, rested for a moment, walked away, and repeated the operation; not once, but many times, first here, then there, all over the area at her disposal. Her behaviour was precisely the same as that of the Decticus, except that her movements were more deliberate. At the end of twenty-four hours her eggs were apparently all laid. For greater certainty I waited a couple of days longer.

I then examined the earth in the pot. The eggs, of a straw-yellow, are cylindrical in form, with rounded ends, and measure about one-tenth of an inch in length. They are placed singly in the soil, in a perpendicular position.

I have found them over the whole area of the pot, at a depth of a twelfth of an inch. As closely as the difficulties of the operation will allow, I have estimated the eggs of a single female, upon passing the earth through a sieve, at five or six hundred. Such a family will certainly undergo an energetic pruning before very long.

The egg of the Cricket is a curiosity, a tiny mechanical marvel. After hatching it appears as a sheath of opaque white, open at the summit, where there is a round and very regular aperture, to the edge of which adheres a little valve like a skull-cap which forms the lid. Instead of breaking at random under the thrusts or the cuts of the new-formed larva, it opens of itself along a line of least resistance which occurs expressly for the purpose. The curious process of the actual hatching should be observed.

A fortnight after the egg is laid two large eye-marks, round and of a reddish black, are seen to darken the forward extremity of the egg. Next, a little above these two points, and right at the end of the cylinder, a tiny circular capsule or swelling is seen. This marks the line of rupture, which is now preparing. Presently the translucency of the egg allows us to observe the fine segmentation of the tiny inmate. Now is the moment to redouble our vigilance and to multiply our visits, especially during the earlier part of the day.

Fortune favours the patient, and rewards my assiduity Round the little capsule changes of infinite delicacy have prepared the line of least resistance. The end of the egg, pushed by the head of the inmate, becomes detached, rises, and falls aside like the top of a tiny phial. The Cricket issues like a Jack-in-the-box.

When the Cricket has departed the shell remains distended, smooth, intact, of the purest white, with the circular lid hanging to the mouth of the door of exit. The egg of the bird breaks clumsily under the blows of a wart-like excrescence which is formed expressly upon the beak of the unborn bird; the egg of the Cricket, of a far superior structure, opens like an ivory casket. The pressure of the inmate's head is sufficient to work the hinge.

The moment he is deprived of his white tunic, the young Cricket, pale all over, almost white, begins to struggle against the overlying soil. He strikes it with his mandibles; he sweeps it aside, kicking it backwards and downwards; and being of a powdery quality, which offers no particular resistance, he soon arrives at the surface, and henceforth knows the joys of the sun, and the perils of intercourse with the living; a tiny, feeble creature, little larger than a flea. His colour deepens. In twenty-four hours he assumes a splendid ebony black which rivals that of the adult insect. Of his original pallor he retains only a white girdle which encircles the thorax and reminds one of the leading-string of an infant.

Very much on the alert, he sounds his surroundings with his long vibrating antennae; he toddles and leaps along with a vigour which his future obesity will no longer permit.

This is the age of stomach troubles. What are we to give him to eat? I do not know. I offer him adult diet—the tender leaves of a lettuce. He disdains to bite it; or perhaps his bites escape me, so tiny would they be.

In a few days, what with my ten households, I see myself loaded with family cares. What shall I do with my five or six thousand Crickets, an attractive flock, to be sure, but one I cannot bring up in my ignorance of the treatment required? I will give you liberty, gentle creatures! I will confide you to the sovereign nurse and schoolmistress, Nature!

It is done. Here and there about my orchard, in the most favourable localities, I loose my legions. What a concert I shall have before my door next year if all goes well! But no! There will probably be silence, for the terrible extermination will follow which corresponds with the fertility of the mother. A few couples only may survive: that is the most we can hope.

The first to come to the living feast and the most eager at the slaughter are the little grey lizard and the ant. I am afraid this latter, hateful filibuster that it is, will not leave me a single Cricket in my garden. It falls upon the tiny Crickets, eviscerates them, and devours them with frantic greed.

Satanic creature! And to think that we place it in the front rank of the insect world! The books celebrate its virtues and never tire of its praises; the naturalists hold it in high esteem and add to its reputation daily; so true is it of animals, as of man, that of the various means of living in history the most certain is to do harm to others.

Every one knows the Bousier (dung-beetle) and the Necrophorus, those lively murderers; the gnat, the drinker of blood; the wasp, the irascible bully with the poisoned dagger; and the ant, the maleficent creature which in the villages of the South of France saps and imperils the rafters and ceilings of a dwelling with the same energy it brings to the eating of a fig. I need say no more; human history is full of similar examples of the useful misunderstood and undervalued and the calamitous glorified.

What with the ants and other exterminating forces, the massacre was so great that the colonies of Crickets in my orchard, so numerous at the outset, were so far decimated that I could not continue my observations, but had to resort to the outside world for further information.

In August, among the detritus of decaying leaves, in little oases whose turf is not burned by the sun, I find the young Cricket has already grown to a considerable size; he is all black, like the adult, without a vestige of the white cincture of the early days. He has no domicile. The shelter of a dead leaf, the cover afforded by a flat stone is sufficient; he is a nomad, and careless where he takes his repose.



Not until the end of October, when the first frosts are at hand, does the work of burrowing commence. The operation is very simple, as far as I can tell from what I have learned from the insect in captivity. The burrow is never made at a bare or conspicuous point; it is always commenced under the shelter of a faded leaf of lettuce, the remains of the food provided. This takes the place of the curtain of grass so necessary to preserve the mysterious privacy of the establishment.

The little miner scratches with his fore-claws, but also makes use of the pincers of his mandibles in order to remove pieces of grit or gravel of any size. I see him stamping with his powerful hinder limbs, which are provided with a double row of spines; I see him raking and sweeping backwards the excavated material, and spreading it out in an inclined plane. This is his whole method.

At first the work goes forward merrily. The excavator disappears under the easily excavated soil of his prison after two hours' labour. At intervals he returns to the orifice, always tail first, and always raking and sweeping. If fatigue overcomes him he rests on the threshold of his burrow, his head projecting outwards, his antennae gently vibrating. Presently he re-enters his tunnel and sets to work again with his pincers and rakes. Presently his periods of repose grow longer and tire my patience.

The most important part of the work is now completed. Once the burrow has attained a depth of a couple of inches, it forms a sufficient shelter for the needs of the moment. The rest will be the work of time; a labour resumed at will, for a short time daily. The burrow will be made deeper and wider as the growth of the inmate and the inclemency of the season demand. Even in winter, if the weather is mild, and the sun smiles upon the threshold of his dwelling, one may sometimes surprise the Cricket thrusting out small quantities of loosened earth, a sign of enlargement and of further burrowing. In the midst of the joys of spring the cares of the house still continue; it is constantly restored and perfected until the death of the occupant.

April comes to an end, and the song of the Cricket commences. At first we hear only timid and occasional solos; but very soon there is a general symphony, when every scrap of turf has its performer. I am inclined to place the Cricket at the head of the choristers of spring. In the waste lands of Provence, when the thyme and the lavender are in flower, the Cricket mingles his note with that of the crested lark, which ascends like a lyrical firework, its throat swelling with music, to its invisible station in the clouds, whence it pours its liquid arias upon the plain below. From the ground the chorus of the Crickets replies. It is monotonous and artless, yet how well it harmonises, in its very simplicity, with the rustic gaiety of a world renewed! It is the hosanna of the awakening, the alleluia of the germinating seed and the sprouting blade. To which of the two performers should the palm be given? I should award it to the Cricket; he triumphs by force of numbers and his never-ceasing note. The lark hushes her song, that the blue-grey fields of lavender, swinging their aromatic censers before the sun, may hear the Cricket alone at his humble, solemn celebration.

But here the anatomist intervenes, roughly demanding of the Cricket: "Show me your instrument, the source of your music!" Like all things of real value, it is very simple; it is based on the same principle as that of the locusts; there is the toothed fiddlestick and the vibrating tympanum.

The right wing-cover overlaps the left and almost completely covers it, except for the sudden fold which encases the insect's flank. This arrangement is the reverse of that exhibited by the green grasshopper, the Decticus, the Ephippigera, and their relations. The Cricket is right-handed, the others left-handed. The two wing-covers have the same structure. To know one is to know the other. Let us examine that on the right hand.

It is almost flat on the back, but suddenly folds over at the side, the turn being almost at right angles. This lateral fold encloses the flank of the abdomen and is covered with fine oblique and parallel nervures. The powerful nervures of the dorsal portion of the wing-cover are of the deepest black, and their general effect is that of a complicated design, not unlike a tangle of Arabic caligraphy.

Seen by transmitted light the wing-cover is of a very pale reddish colour, excepting two large adjacent spaces, one of which, the larger and anterior, is triangular in shape, while the other, the smaller and posterior, is oval. Each space is surrounded by a strong nervure and goffered by slight wrinkles or depressions. These two spaces represent the mirror of the locust tribe; they constitute the sonorous area. The substance of the wing-cover is finer here than elsewhere, and shows traces of iridescent though somewhat smoky colour.

These are parts of an admirable instrument, greatly superior to that of the Decticus. The five hundred prisms of the bow biting upon the ridges of the wing-cover opposed to it set all four tympanums vibrating at once; the lower pair by direct friction, the upper pair by the vibration of the wing-cover itself. What a powerful sound results! The Decticus, endowed with only one indifferent "mirror," can be heard only at a few paces; the Cricket, the possessor of four vibratory areas, can be heard at a hundred yards.

The Cricket rivals the Cigale in loudness, but his note has not the displeasing, raucous quality of the latter. Better still: he has the gift of expression, for he can sing loud or soft. The wing-covers, as we have seen, are prolonged in a deep fold over each flank. These folds are the dampers, which, as they are pressed downwards or slightly raised, modify the intensity of the sound, and according to the extent of their contact with the soft abdomen now muffle the song to a mezza voce and now let it sound fortissimo.

Peace reigns in the cage until the warlike instinct of the mating period breaks out. These duels between rivals are frequent and lively, but not very serious. The two rivals rise up against one another, biting at one another's heads—these solid, fang-proof helmets—roll each other over, pick themselves up, and separate. The vanquished Cricket scuttles off as fast as he can; the victor insults him by a couple of triumphant and boastful chirps; then, moderating his tone, he tacks and veers about the desired one.

The lover proceeds to make himself smart. Hooking one of his antennae towards him with one of his free claws, he takes it between his mandibles in order to curl it and moisten it with saliva. With his long hind legs, spurred and laced with red, he stamps with impatience and kicks out at nothing. Emotion renders him silent. His wing-covers are nevertheless in rapid motion, but are no longer sounding, or at most emit but an unrhythmical rubbing sound.

Presumptuous declaration! The female Cricket does not run to hide herself in the folds of her lettuce leaves; but she lifts the curtain a little, and looks out, and wishes to be seen:—

Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri.

She flies towards the brake, but hopes first to be perceived, said the poet of the delightful eclogue, two thousand years ago. Sacred provocations of lovers, are they not in all ages the same?



CHAPTER XI

THE ITALIAN CRICKET

My house shelters no specimens of the domestic Cricket, the guest of bakeries and rustic hearths. But although in my village the chinks under the hearthstones are mute, the nights of summer are musical with a singer little known in the North. The sunny hours of spring have their singer, the Field-Cricket of which I have written; while in the summer, during the stillness of the night, we hear the note of the Italian Cricket, the OEcanthus pellucens, Scop. One diurnal and one nocturnal, between them they share the kindly half of the year. When the Field-Cricket ceases to sing it is not long before the other begins its serenade.

The Italian Cricket has not the black costume and heavy shape characteristic of the family. It is, on the contrary, a slender, weakly creature; its colour very pale, indeed almost white, as is natural in view of its nocturnal habits. In handling it one is afraid of crushing it between the fingers. It lives an aerial existence; on shrubs and bushes of all kinds, on tall herbage and grasses, and rarely descends to the earth. Its song, the pleasant voice of the calm, hot evenings from July to October, commences at sunset and continues for the greater part of the night.

This song is familiar to all Provencals; for the least patch of thicket or tuft of grasses has its group of instrumentalists. It resounds even in the granaries, into which the insect strays, attracted thither by the fodder. But no one, so mysterious are the manners of the pallid Cricket, knows exactly what is the source of the serenade, which is often, though quite erroneously, attributed to the common field-cricket, which at this period is silent and as yet quite young.

The song consists of a Gri-i-i, Gri-i-i, a slow, gentle note, rendered more expressive by a slight tremor. Hearing it, one divines the extreme tenuity and the amplitude of the vibrating membranes. If the insect is not in any way disturbed as it sits in the low foliage, the note does not vary, but at the least noise the performer becomes a ventriloquist. First of all you hear it there, close by, in front of you, and the next moment you hear it over there, twenty yards away; the double note decreased in volume by the distance.

You go forward. Nothing is there. The sound proceeds again from its original point. But no—it is not there; it is to the left now—unless it is to the right—or behind.... Complete confusion! It is impossible to detect, by means of the ear, the direction from which the chirp really comes. Much patience and many precautions will be required before you can capture the insect by the light of the lantern. A few specimens caught under these conditions and placed in a cage have taught me the little I know concerning the musician who so perfectly deceives our ears.

The wing-covers are both formed of a dry, broad membrane, diaphanous and as fine as the white skin on the outside of an onion, which is capable of vibrating over its whole area. Their shape is that of the segment of a circle, cut away at the upper end. This segment is bent at a right angle along a strong longitudinal nervure, and descends on the outer side in a flap which encloses the insect's flank when in the attitude of repose.

The right wing-cover overlaps the left. Its inner edge carries, on the under side, near the base, a callosity from which five radiating nervures proceed; two of them upwards and two downwards, while the fifth runs approximately at right angles to these. This last nervure, which is of a slightly reddish hue, is the fundamental element of the musical device; it is, in short, the bow, the fiddlestick, as is proved by the fine notches which run across it. The rest of the wing-cover shows a few more nervures of less importance, which hold the membrane stretched tight, but do not form part of the friction apparatus.

The left or lower wing-cover is of similar structure, with the difference that the bow, the callosity, and the nervures occupy the upper face. It will be found that the two bows—that is, the toothed or indented nervures—cross one another obliquely.

When the note has its full volume, the wing-covers are well raised above the body like a wide gauzy sail, only touching along the internal edges. The two bows, the toothed nervures, engage obliquely one with the other, and their mutual friction causes the sonorous vibration of the two stretched membranes.



The sound can be modified accordingly as the strokes of each bow bear upon the callosity, which is itself serrated or wrinkled, or on one of the four smooth radiating nervures. Thus in part are explained the illusions produced by a sound which seems to come first from one point, then from another, when the timid insect is alarmed.

The production of loud or soft resounding or muffled notes, which gives the illusion of distance, the principal element in the art of the ventriloquist, has another and easily discovered source. To produce the loud, open sounds the wing-covers are fully lifted; to produce the muted, muffled notes they are lowered. When lowered their outer edges press more or less lightly on the soft flanks of the insect, thus diminishing the vibratory area and damping the sound.

The gentle touch of a finger-tip muffles the sharp, loud ringing of a glass tumbler or "musical-glass" and changes it into a veiled, indefinite sound which seems to come from a distance. The White Cricket knows this secret of acoustics. It misleads those that seek it by pressing the edge of its vibrating membranes to the soft flesh of its abdomen. Our musical instruments have their dampers; that of the OEcanthus pellucens rivals and surpasses them in simplicity of means and perfection of results.

The Field-Cricket and its relatives also vary the volume of their song by raising or lowering the elytra so as to enclose the abdomen in a varying degree, but none of them can obtain by this method results so deceptive as those produced by the Italian Cricket.

To this illusion of distance, which is a source of perpetually renewed surprise, evoked by the slightest sound of our footsteps, we must add the purity of the sound, and its soft tremolo. I know of no insect voice more gracious, more limpid, in the profound peace of the nights of August. How many times, per amica silentia lunae, have I lain upon the ground, in the shelter of a clump of rosemary, to listen to the delicious concert!

The nocturnal Cricket sings continually in the gardens. Each tuft of the red-flowered cistus has its band of musicians, and each bush of fragrant lavender. The shrubs and the terebinth-trees contain their orchestras. With its clear, sweet voice, all this tiny world is questioning, replying, from bush to bush, from tree to tree; or rather, indifferent to the songs of others, each little being is singing his joys to himself alone.

Above my head the constellation of Cygnus stretches its great cross along the Milky Way; below, all around me, palpitates the insect symphony. The atom telling of its joys makes me forget the spectacle of the stars. We know nothing of these celestial eyes which gaze upon us, cold and calm, with scintillations like the blinking of eyelids.

Science tells us of their distance, their speeds, their masses, their volumes; it burdens us with stupendous numbers and stupefies us with immensities; but it does not succeed in moving us. And why? Because it lacks the great secret: the secret of life. What is there, up there? What do these suns warm? Worlds analogous to ours, says reason; planets on which life is evolving in an endless variety of forms. A superb conception of the universe, but after all a pure conception, not based upon patent facts and infallible testimony at the disposal of one and all. The probable, even the extremely probable, is not the obvious, the evident, which forces itself irresistibly and leaves no room for doubt.

But in your company, O my Crickets, I feel the thrill of life, the soul of our native lump of earth; and for this reason, as I lean against the hedge of rosemary, I bestow only an absent glance upon the constellation of Cygnus, but give all my attention to your serenade. A little animated slime, capable of pleasure and pain, surpasses in interest the universe of dead matter.



CHAPTER XII

THE SISYPHUS BEETLE.—THE INSTINCT OF PATERNITY

The duties of paternity are seldom imposed on any but the higher animals. They are most notable in the bird; and the furry peoples acquit themselves honourably. Lower in the scale we find in the father a general indifference as to the fate of the family. Very few insects form exceptions to this rule. Although all are imbued with a mating instinct that is almost frenzied, nearly all, when the passion of the moment is appeased, terminate then and there their domestic relations, and withdraw, indifferent to the brood, which has to look after itself as best it may.

This paternal coldness, which would be odious in the higher walks of animal life, where the weakness of the young demands prolonged assistance, has in the insect world the excuse that the new-born young are comparatively robust, and are able, without help, to fill their mouths and stomachs, provided they find themselves in propitious surroundings. All that the prosperity of the race demands of the Pierides, or Cabbage Butterflies, is that they should deposit their eggs on the leaves of the cabbage; what purpose would be served by the instincts of a father? The botanical instinct of the mother needs no assistance. At the period of laying the father would be in the way. Let him pursue his flirtations elsewhere; the laying of eggs is a serious business.

In the case of the majority of insects the process of education is unknown, or summary in the extreme. The insect has only to select a grazing-ground upon which its family will establish itself the moment it is hatched; or a site which will allow the young to find their proper sustenance for themselves. There is no need of a father in these various cases. After mating, the discarded male, who is henceforth useless, drags out a lingering existence of a few days, and finally perishes without having given the slightest assistance in the work of installing his offspring.

But matters are not everywhere so primitive as this. There are tribes in which an inheritance is prepared for the family which will assure it both of food and of shelter in advance. The Hymenoptera in particular are past-masters in the provision of cellars, jars, and other utensils in which the honey-paste destined for the young is stored; they are perfect in the art of excavating storehouses of food for their grubs.

This stupendous labour of construction and provisioning, this labour that absorbs the insect's whole life, is the work of the mother only, who wears herself out at her task. The father, intoxicated with sunlight, lies idle on the threshold of the workshop, watching the heroic female at her work, and regards himself as excused from all labour when he has plagued his neighbours a little.

Does he never perform useful work? Why does he not follow the example of the swallows, each of whom brings a fair share of the straw and mortar for the building of the nest and the midges for the young brood? No, he does nothing; perhaps alleging the excuse of his relative weakness. But this is a poor excuse; for to cut out little circles from a leaf, to rake a little cotton from a downy plant, or to gather a little mortar from a muddy spot, would hardly be a task beyond his powers. He might very well collaborate, at least as labourer; he could at least gather together the materials for the more intelligent mother to place in position. The true motive of his idleness is ineptitude.

It is a curious thing that the Hymenoptera, the most skilful of all industrial insects, know nothing of paternal labour. The male of the genus, in whom we should expect the requirements of the young to develop the highest aptitudes, is as useless as a butterfly, whose family costs so little to establish. The actual distribution of instinct upsets our most reasonable previsions.

It upsets our expectations so completely that we are surprised to find in the dung-beetle the noble prerogative which is lacking in the bee tribe. The mates of several species of dung-beetle keep house together and know the worth of mutual labour. Consider the male and female Geotrupes, which prepare together the patrimony of their larvae; in their case the father assists his companion with the pressure of his robust body in the manufacture of their balls of compressed nutriment. These domestic habits are astonishing amidst the general isolation.

To this example, hitherto unique, my continual researches in this direction permit me to-day to add three others which are fully as interesting. All three are members of the corporation of dung-beetles. I will relate their habits, but briefly, as in many respects their history is the same as that of the Sacred Scarabaeus, the Spanish Copris, and others.

The first example is the Sisyphus beetle (Sisyphus Schaefferi, Lin.), the smallest and most industrious of our pill-makers. It has no equal in lively agility, grotesque somersaults, and sudden tumbles down the impossible paths or over the impracticable obstacles to which its obstinacy is perpetually leading it. In allusion to these frantic gymnastics Latreille has given the insect the name of Sisyphus, after the celebrated inmate of the classic Hades. This unhappy spirit underwent terrible exertions in his efforts to heave to the top of a mountain an enormous rock, which always escaped him at the moment of attaining the summit, and rolled back to the foot of the slope. Begin again, poor Sisyphus, begin again, begin again always! Your torments will never cease until the rock is firmly placed upon the summit of the mountain.

I like this myth. It is, in a way, the history of many of us; not odious scoundrels worthy of eternal torments, but worthy and laborious folk, useful to their neighbours. One crime alone is theirs to expiate: the crime of poverty. Half a century or more ago, for my own part, I left many blood-stained tatters on the crags of the inhospitable mountain; I sweated, strained every nerve, exhausted my veins, spent without reckoning my reserves of energy, in order to carry upward and lodge in a place of security that crushing burden, my daily bread; and hardly was the load balanced but it once more slipped downwards, fell, and was engulfed. Begin again, poor Sisyphus; begin again, until your burden, falling for the last time, shall crush your head and set you free at length.

The Sisyphus of the naturalists knows nothing of these tribulations. Agile and lively, careless of slope or precipice, he trundles his load, which is sometimes food for himself, sometimes for his offspring. He is very rare hereabouts; I should never have succeeded in obtaining a sufficient number of specimens for my purpose but for an assistant whom I may opportunely present to the reader, for he will be mentioned again in these recitals.

This is my son, little Paul, aged seven. An assiduous companion of the chase, he knows better than any one of his age the secrets of the Cigale, the Cricket, and especially of the dung-beetle, his great delight. At a distance of twenty yards his clear sight distinguishes the refuse-tip of a beetle's burrow from a chance lump of earth; his fine ear will catch the chirping of a grasshopper inaudible to me. He lends me his sight and hearing, and I in return make him free of my thoughts, which he welcomes attentively, raising his wide blue eyes questioningly to mine.

What an adorable thing is the first blossoming of the intellect! Best of all ages is that when the candid curiosity awakens and commences to acquire knowledge of every kind. Little Paul has his own insectorium, in which the Scarabaeus makes his balls; his garden, the size of a handkerchief, in which he grows haricot beans, which are often dug up to see if the little roots are growing longer; his plantation, containing four oak-trees an inch in height, to which the acorns still adhere. These serve as diversions after the arid study of grammar, which goes forward none the worse on that account.

What beautiful and useful knowledge the teaching of natural history might put into childish heads, if only science would consider the very young; if our barracks of universities would only combine the lifeless study of books with the living study of the fields; if only the red tape of the curriculum, so dear to bureaucrats, would not strangle all willing initiative. Little Paul and I will study as much as possible in the open country, among the rosemary bushes and arbutus. There we shall gain vigour of body and of mind; we shall find the true and the beautiful better than in school-books.

To-day the blackboard has a rest; it is a holiday. We rise early, in view of the intended expedition; so early that we must set out fasting. But no matter; when we are hungry we shall rest in the shade, and you will find in my knapsack the usual viaticum—apples and a crust of bread. The month of May is near; the Sisyphus should have appeared. Now we must explore at the foot of the mountain, the scanty pastures through which the herds have passed; we must break with our fingers, one by one, the cakes of sheep-dung dried by the sun, but still retaining a spot of moisture in the centre. There we shall find Sisyphus, cowering and waiting until the evening for fresher pasturage.

Possessed of this secret, which I learned from previous fortuitous discoveries, little Paul immediately becomes a master in the art of dislodging the beetle. He shows such zeal, has such an instinct for likely hiding-places, that after a brief search I am rich beyond my ambitions. Behold me the owner of six couples of Sisyphus beetles: an unheard-of number, which I had never hoped to obtain.

For their maintenance a wire-gauze cover suffices, with a bed of sand and diet to their taste. They are very small, scarcely larger than a cherry-stone. Their shape is extremely curious. The body is dumpy, tapering to an acorn-shaped posterior; the legs are very long, resembling those of the spider when outspread; the hinder legs are disproportionately long and curved, being thus excellently adapted to enlace and press the little pilule of dung.

Mating takes place towards the beginning of May, on the surface of the soil, among the remains of the sheep-dung on which the beetles have been feeding. Soon the moment for establishing the family arrives. With equal zeal the two partners take part in the kneading, transport, and baking of the food for their offspring. With the file-like forelegs a morsel of convenient size is shaped from the piece of dung placed in the cage. Father and mother manipulate the piece together, striking it blows with their claws, compressing it, and shaping it into a ball about the size of a big pea.

As in the case of the Scarabaeus sacer, the exact spherical form is produced without the mechanical device of rolling the ball. Before it is moved, even before it is cut loose from its point of support, the fragment is modelled into the shape of a sphere. The beetle as geometer is aware of the form best adapted to the long preservation of preserved foods.

The ball is soon ready. It must now be forced to acquire, by means of a vigorous rolling, the crust which will protect the interior from a too rapid evaporation. The mother, recognisable by her slightly robuster body, takes the place of honour in front. Her long hinder legs on the soil, her forelegs on the ball, she drags it towards her as she walks backwards. The father pushes behind, moving tail first, his head held low. This is exactly the method of the Scarabaeus beetles, which also work in couples, though for another object. The Sisyphus beetles harness themselves to provide an inheritance for their larvae; the larger insects are concerned in obtaining the material for a banquet which the two chance-met partners will consume underground.

The couple set off, with no definite goal ahead, across the irregularities of the soil, which cannot be avoided by a leader who hauls backwards. But even if the Sisyphus saw the obstacles she would not try to evade them: witness her obstinate endeavour to drag her load up the wire gauze of her cage!

A hopeless undertaking! Fixing her hinder claws in the meshes of the wire gauze the mother drags her burden towards her; then, enlacing it with her legs, she holds it suspended. The father, finding no purchase for his legs, clutches the ball, grows on to it, so to speak, thus adding his weight to that of the burden, and awaits events. The effort is too great to last. Ball and beetle fall together. The mother, from above, gazes a moment in surprise, and suddenly lets herself fall, only to re-embrace the ball and recommence her impracticable efforts to scale the wall. After many tumbles the attempt is at last abandoned.

Even on level ground the task is not without its difficulties. At every moment the load swerves on the summit of a pebble, a fragment of gravel; the team are overturned, and lie on their backs, kicking their legs in the air. This is a mere nothing. They pick themselves up and resume their positions, always quick and lively. The accidents which so often throw them on their backs seem to cause them no concern; one would even think they were invited. The pilule has to be matured, given a proper consistency. In these conditions falls, shocks, blows, and jolts might well enter into the programme. This mad trundling lasts for hours and hours.

Finally, the mother, considering that the matter has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion, departs in search of a favourable place for storage. The father, crouched upon the treasure, waits. If the absence of his companion is prolonged he amuses himself by rapidly whirling the pill between his hind legs, which are raised in the air. He juggles with the precious burden; he tests its perfections between his curved legs, calliper-wise. Seeing him frisking in this joyful occupation, who can doubt that he experiences all the satisfactions of a father assured of the future of his family? It is I, he seems to say, it is I who have made this loaf, so beautifully round; it is I who have made the hard crust to preserve the soft dough; it is I who have baked it for my sons! And he raises on high, in the sight of all, this magnificent testimonial of his labours.

But now the mother has chosen the site. A shallow pit is made, the mere commencement of the projected burrow. The ball is pushed and pulled until it is close at hand. The father, a vigilant watchman, still retains his hold, while the mother digs with claws and head. Soon the pit is deep enough to receive the ball; she cannot dispense with the close contact of the sacred object; she must feel it bobbing behind her, against her back, safe from all parasites and robbers, before she can decide to burrow further. She fears what might happen to the precious loaf if it were abandoned at the threshold of the burrow until the completion of the dwelling. There is no lack of midges and tiny dung-beetles—Aphodiinae—which might take possession of it. It is only prudent to be distrustful.

So the ball is introduced into the pit, half in and half out of the mouth of the burrow. The mother, below, clasps and pulls; the father, above, moderates the jolts and prevents it from rolling. All goes well. Digging is resumed, and the descent continues, always with the same prudence; one beetle dragging the load, the other regulating its descent and clearing away all rubbish that might hinder the operation. A few more efforts, and the ball disappears underground with the two miners. What follows will be, for a time at least, only a repetition of what we have seen. Let us wait half a day or so.

If our vigilance is not relaxed we shall see the father regain the surface alone, and crouch in the sand near the mouth of the burrow. Retained by duties in the performance of which her companion can be of no assistance, the mother habitually delays her reappearance until the following day. When she finally emerges the father wakes up, leaves his hiding place, and rejoins her. The reunited couple return to their pasturage, refresh themselves, and then cut out another ball of dung. As before, both share the work; the hewing and shaping, the transport, and the burial in ensilage.

This conjugal fidelity is delightful; but is it really the rule? I should not dare to affirm that it is. There must be flighty individuals who, in the confusion under a large cake of droppings, forget the fair confectioners for whom they have worked as journeymen, and devote themselves to the services of others, encountered by chance; there must be temporary unions, and divorces after the burial of a single pellet. No matter: the little I myself have seen gives me a high opinion of the domestic morals of the Sisyphus.

Let us consider these domestic habits a little further before coming to the contents of the burrow. The father works fully as hard as the mother at the extraction and modelling of the pellet which is destined to be the inheritance of a larva; he shares in the work of transport, even if he plays a secondary part; he watches over the pellet when the mother is absent, seeking for a suitable site for the excavation of the cellar; he helps in the work of digging; he carries away the rubbish from the burrow; finally, to crown all these qualities, he is in a great measure faithful to his spouse.

The Scarabaeus exhibits some of these characteristics. He also assists his spouse in the preparation of pellets of dung; he also assists her to transport the pellets, the pair facing each other and the female going backwards. But as I have stated already, the motive of this mutual service is selfish; the two partners labour only for their own good. The feast is for themselves alone. In the labours that concern the family the female Scarabaeus receives no assistance. Alone she moulds her sphere, extracts it from the lump and rolls it backwards, with her back to her task, in the position adopted by the male Sisyphus; alone she excavates her burrow, and alone she buries the fruit of her labour. Oblivious of the gravid mother and the future brood, the male gives her no assistance in her exhausting task. How different to the little pellet-maker, the Sisyphus!

It is now time to visit the burrow. At no very great depth we find a narrow chamber, just large enough for the mother to move around at her work. Its very exiguity proves that the male cannot remain underground; so soon as the chamber is ready he must retire in order to leave the female room to move. We have, in fact, seen that he returns to the surface long before the female.

The contents of the cellar consist of a single pellet, a masterpiece of plastic art. It is a miniature reproduction of the pear-shaped ball of the Scarabaeus, a reproduction whose very smallness gives an added value to the polish of the surface and the beauty of its curves. Its larger diameter varies from half to three-quarters of an inch. It is the most elegant product of the dung-beetle's art.

But this perfection is of brief duration. Very soon the little "pear" becomes covered with gnarled excrescences, black and twisted, which disfigure it like so many warts. Part of the surface, which is otherwise intact, disappears under a shapeless mass. The origin of these knotted excrescences completely deceived me at first. I suspected some cryptogamic vegetation, some Spheriaecaea, for example, recognisable by its black, knotted, incrusted growth. It was the larva that showed me my mistake.

The larva is a maggot curved like a hook, carrying on its back an ample pouch or hunch, forming part of its alimentary canal. The reserve of excreta in this hunch enables it to seal accidental perforations of the shell of its lodging with an instantaneous jet of mortar. These sudden emissions, like little worm-casts, are also practised by the Scarabaeus, but the latter rarely makes use of them.

The larvae of the various dung-beetles utilise their alimentary residues in rough-casting their houses, which by their dimensions lend themselves to this method of disposal, while evading the necessity of opening temporary windows by which the ordure can be expelled. Whether for lack of sufficient room, or for other reasons which escape me, the larva of the Sisyphus, having employed a certain amount in the smoothing of the interior, ejects the rest of its digestive products from its dwelling.

Let us examine one of these "pears" when the inmate is already partly grown. Sooner or later we shall see a spot of moisture appear at some point on the surface; the wall softens, becomes thinner, and then, through the softened shell, a jet of dark green excreta rises and falls back upon itself in corkscrew convolutions. One excrescence the more has been formed; as it dries it becomes black.

What has occurred? The larva has opened a temporary breach in the wall of its shell; and through this orifice, in which a slight thickness of the outer glaze still remains, it has expelled the excess of mortar which it could not employ within. This practice of forming oubliettes in the shell of its prison does not endanger the grub, as they are immediately closed, and hermetically sealed by the base of the jet, which is compressed as by a stroke of a trowel. The stopper is so quickly put in place that the contents remain moist in spite of the frequent breaches made in the shell of the "pear." There is no danger of an influx of the dry outer air.

The Sisyphus seems to be aware of the peril which later on, in the dog-days, will threaten its "pear," small as it is, and so near the surface of the ground. It is extremely precocious. It labours in April and May when the air is mild. In the first fortnight of July, before the terrible dog-days have arrived, the members of its family break their shells and set forth in search of the heap of droppings which will furnish them with food and lodging during the fierce days of summer. Then come the short but pleasant days of autumn, the retreat underground and the winter torpor, the awakening of spring, and finally the cycle is closed by the festival of pellet-making.

One word more as to the fertility of the Sisyphus. My six couples under the wire-gauze cover furnished me with fifty-seven inhabited pellets. This gives an average of more than nine to each couple; a figure which the Scarabaeus sacer is far from attaining. To what should we attribute this superior fertility? I can only see one cause: the fact that the male works as valiantly as the female. Family cares too great for the strength of one are not too heavy when there are two to support them.



CHAPTER XIII

A BEE-HUNTER: THE PHILANTHUS AVIPORUS

To encounter among the Hymenoptera, those ardent lovers of flowers, a species which goes a-hunting on its own account is, to say the least of it, astonishing. That the larder of the larvae should be provisioned with captured prey is natural enough; but that the provider, whose diet is honey, should itself devour its captives is a fact both unexpected and difficult to comprehend. We are surprised that a drinker of nectar should become a drinker of blood. But our surprise abates if we consider the matter closely. The double diet is more apparent than real; the stomach which fills itself with the nectar of flowers does not gorge itself with flesh. When she perforates the rump of her victim the Odynerus does not touch the flesh, which is a diet absolutely contrary to her tastes; she confines herself to drinking the defensive liquid which the grub distils at the end of its intestine. For her this liquid is doubtless a beverage of delicious flavour, with which she relieves from time to time her staple diet of the honey distilled by flowers, some highly spiced condiment, appetiser or aperient, or perhaps—who knows?—a substitute for honey. Although the qualities of the liquid escape me, I see at least that Odynerus cares nothing for the rest. Once the pouch is emptied the larva is abandoned as useless offal, a certain sign of non-carnivorous appetites. Under these conditions the persecutor of Chrysomela can no longer be regarded as guilty of an unnatural double dietary.

We may even wonder whether other species also are not apt to draw some direct profit from the hunting imposed upon them by the needs of the family. The procedure of Odynerus in opening the anal pouch is so far removed from the usual that we should not anticipate many imitators; it is a secondary detail, and impracticable with game of a different kind. But there may well be a certain amount of variety in the means of direct utilisation. Why, for example, when the victim which has just been paralysed or rendered insensible by stinging contains in the stomach a delicious meal, semi-liquid or liquid in consistency, should the hunter scruple to rob the half-living body and force it to disgorge without injuring the quality of its flesh? There may well be robbers of the moribund, attracted not by their flesh but by the appetising contents of their stomachs.

As a matter of fact there are such, and they are numerous. In the first rank we may cite that hunter of the domestic bee, Philanthus aviporus (Latreille). For a long time I suspected Philanthus of committing such acts of brigandage for her own benefit, having many times surprised her gluttonously licking the honey-smeared mouth of the bee; I suspected that her hunting of the bee was not undertaken entirely for the benefit of her larvae. The suspicion was worth experimental confirmation. At the time I was interested in another question also: I wanted to study, absolutely at leisure, the methods by which the various predatory species dealt with their victims. In the case of Philanthus I made use of the improvised cage already described; and Philanthus it was who furnished me with my first data on the subject. She responded to my hopes with such energy that I thought myself in possession of an unequalled method of observation, by means of which I could witness again and again, to satiety even, incidents of a kind so difficult to surprise in a state of nature. Alas! the early days of my acquaintance with Philanthus promised me more than the future had in store for me! Not to anticipate, however, let us place under the bell-glass the hunter and the game. I recommend the experiment to whomsoever would witness the perfection with which the predatory Hymenoptera use their stings. The result is not in doubt and the waiting is short; the moment the prey is perceived in an attitude favourable to her designs, the bandit rushes at it, and all is over. In detail, the tragedy develops as follows:

I place under a bell-glass a Philanthus and two or three domestic bees. The prisoners climb the glass walls, on the more strongly lighted side; they ascend, descend, and seek to escape; the polished, vertical surface is for them quite easy to walk upon. They presently quiet down, and the brigand begins to notice her surroundings. The antennae point forward, seeking information; the hinder legs are drawn up with a slight trembling, as of greed and rapacity, in the thighs; the head turns to the right and the left, and follows the evolutions of the bees against the glass. The posture of the scoundrelly insect is strikingly expressive; one reads in it the brutal desires of a creature in ambush, the cunning patience that postpones attack. The choice is made, and Philanthus throws herself upon her victim.

Turn by turn tumbled and tumbling, the two insects roll over and over. But the struggle soon quiets down, and the assassin commences to plunder her prize. I have seen her adopt two methods. In the first, more usual than the other, the bee is lying on the ground, upon its back, and Philanthus, mouth to mouth and abdomen to abdomen, clasps it with her six legs, while she seizes its neck in her mandibles. The abdomen is then curved forward and gropes for a moment for the desired spot in the upper part of the thorax, which it finally reaches. The sting plunges into the victim, remains in the wound for a moment, and all is over. Without loosing the victim, which is still tightly clasped, the murderer restores her abdomen to the normal position and holds it pressed against that of the bee.

By the second method Philanthus operates standing upright. Resting on the hinder feet and the extremity of the folded wings, she rises proudly to a vertical position, holding the bee facing her by her four anterior claws. In order to get the bee into the proper position for the final stroke, she swings the poor creature round and back again with the careless roughness of a child dandling a doll. Her pose is magnificent, solidly based upon her sustaining tripod, the two posterior thighs and the end of the wings, she flexes the abdomen forwards and upwards, and, as before, stings the bee in the upper part of the thorax. The originality of her pose at the moment of striking surpasses anything I have ever witnessed.

The love of knowledge in matters of natural history is not without its cruelties. To make absolutely certain of the point attained by the sting, and to inform myself completely concerning this horrible talent for murder, I have provoked I dare not confess how many assassinations in captivity. Without a single exception, the bee has always been stung in the throat. In the preparations for the final blow the extremity of the abdomen may of course touch here and there, at different points of the thorax or abdomen, but it never remains there, nor is the sting unsheathed, as may easily be seen. Once the struggle has commenced the Philanthus is so absorbed in her operations that I can remove the glass cover and follow every detail of the drama with my magnifying-glass.

The invariable situation of the wound being proved, I bend back the head of the bee, so as to open the articulation. I see under what we may call the chin of the bee a white spot, hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch square, where the horny integuments are lacking, and the fine skin is exposed uncovered. It is there, always there, in that tiny defect in the bee's armour, that the sting is inserted. Why is this point attacked rather than another? Is it the only point that is vulnerable? Stretch open the articulation of the corselet to the rear of the first pair of legs. There you will see an area of defenceless skin, fully as delicate as that of the throat, but much more extensive. The horny armour of the bee has no larger breach. If the Philanthus were guided solely by considerations of vulnerability she would certainly strike there, instead of insistently seeking the narrow breach in the throat. The sting would not grope or hesitate, it would find its mark at the first attempt. No; the poisoned thrust is not conditioned by mechanical considerations; the murderer disdains the wide breach in the corselet and prefers the lesser one beneath the chin, for purely logical reasons which we will now attempt to elicit.

The moment the bee is stung I release it from the aggressor. I am struck in the first place by the sudden inertia of the antennae and the various members of the mouth; organs which continue to move for so long a time in the victims of most predatory creatures. I see none of the indications with which my previous studies of paralysed victims have made me familiar: the antennae slowly waving, the mandibles opening and closing, the palpae trembling for days, for weeks, even for months. The thighs tremble for a minute or two at most; and the struggle is over. Henceforth there is complete immobility. The significance of this sudden inertia is forced upon me: the Philanthus has stabbed the cervical ganglions. Hence the sudden immobility of all the organs of the head: hence the real, not the apparent death of the bee. The Philanthus does not paralyse merely, but kills.

This is one step gained. The murderer chooses the point below the chin as the point of attack, in order to reach the principal centres of innervation, the cephalic ganglions, and thus to abolish life at a single blow. The vital centres being poisoned, immediate death must follow. If the object of the Philanthus were merely to cause paralysis she would plunge her sting into the defective corselet, as does the Cerceris in attacking the weevil, whose armour is quite unlike the bee's. Her aim is to kill outright, as we shall presently see; she wants a corpse, not a paralytic. We must admit that her technique is admirable; our human murderers could do no better.

Her posture of attack, which is very different to that of the paralysers, is infallibly fatal to the victim. Whether she delivers the attack in the erect position or prone, she holds the bee before her, head to head and thorax to thorax. In this position it suffices to flex the abdomen in order to reach the joint of the neck, and to plunge the sting obliquely upwards into the head of the captive. If the bee were seized in the inverse position, or if the sting were to go slightly astray, the results would be totally different; the sting, penetrating the bee in a downward direction, would poison the first thoracic ganglion and provoke a partial paralysis only. What art, to destroy a miserable bee! In what fencing-school did the slayer learn that terrible upward thrust beneath the chin? And as she has learned it, how is it that her victim, so learned in matters of architecture, so conversant with the politics of Socialism, has so far learned nothing in her own defence? As vigorous as the aggressor, she also carries a rapier, which is even more formidable and more painful in its results—at all events, when my finger is the victim! For centuries and centuries Philanthus has stored her cellars with the corpses of bees, yet the innocent victim submits, and the annual decimation of her race has not taught her how to deliver herself from the scourge by a well-directed thrust. I am afraid I shall never succeed in understanding how it is that the assailant has acquired her genius for sudden murder while the assailed, better armed and no less powerful, uses her dagger at random, and so far without effect. If the one has learned something from the prolonged exercise of the attack, then the other should also have learned something from the prolonged exercise of defence, for attack and defence are of equal significance in the struggle for life. Among the theorists of our day, is there any so far-sighted as to be able to solve this enigma?

I will take this opportunity of presenting a second point which embarrasses me; it is the carelessness—it is worse than that—the imbecility of the bee in the presence of the Philanthus. One would naturally suppose that the persecuted insect, gradually instructed by family misfortune, would exhibit anxiety at the approach of the ravisher, and would at least try to escape. But in my bell-glasses or wire-gauze cages I see nothing of the kind. Once the first excitement due to imprisonment has passed the bee takes next to no notice of its terrible neighbour. I have seen it side by side with Philanthus on the same flower; assassin and future victim were drinking from the same goblet. I have seen it stupidly coming to inquire what the stranger might be, as the latter crouched watching on the floor. When the murderer springs it is usually upon some bee which passes before her, and throws itself, so to speak, into her clutches; either thoughtlessly or out of curiosity. There is no frantic terror, no sign of anxiety, no tendency to escape. How is it that the experience of centuries, which is said to teach so much to the lower creatures, has not taught the bee even the beginning of apine wisdom: a deep-rooted horror of the Philanthus? Does the bee count upon its sting? But the unhappy creature is no fencer; it thrusts without method, at random. Nevertheless, let us watch it at the final and fatal moment.

When the ravisher brings her sting into play the bee also uses its sting, and with fury. I see the point thrusting now in this direction, now in that; but in empty air, or grazing and slipping over the convexity of the murderer's back, which is violently flexed. These blows have no serious results. In the position assumed by the two as they struggle the abdomen of the Philanthus is inside and that of the bee outside; thus the sting of the latter has under its point only the dorsal face of the enemy, which is convex and slippery, and almost invulnerable, so well is it armoured. There is no breach there by which the sting might possibly enter; and the operation takes place with the certainty of a skilful surgeon using the lancet, despite the indignant protests of the patient.

The fatal stroke once delivered, the murderer remains for some time on the body of the victim, clasping it face to face, for reasons that we must now consider. It may be that the position is perilous for Philanthus. The posture of attack and self-protection is abandoned, and the ventral area, more vulnerable than the back, is exposed to the sting of the bee. Now the dead bee retains for some minutes the reflex use of the sting, as I know to my cost: for removing the bee too soon from the aggressor, and handling it carelessly, I have received a most effectual sting. In her long embrace of the poisoned bee, how does Philanthus avoid this sting, which does not willingly give up its life without vengeance? Are there not sometimes unexpected accidents? Perhaps.

Here is a fact which encourages me in this belief. I had placed under the bell-glass at the same time four bees and as many Eristales, in order to judge of the entomological knowledge of Philanthus as exemplified in the distinction of species. Reciprocal quarrels broke out among the heterogeneous group. Suddenly, in the midst of the tumult, the killer is killed. Who has struck the blow? Certainly not the turbulent but pacific Eristales; it was one of the bees, which by chance had thrust truly in the mellay. When and how? I do not know. This accident is unique in my experience; but it throws a light upon the question. The bee is capable of withstanding its adversary; it can, with a thrust of its envenomed needle, kill the would-be killer. That it does not defend itself more skilfully when it falls into the hands of its enemy is due to ignorance of fencing, not to the weakness of the arm. And here again arises, more insistently than before, the question I asked but now: how is it that the Philanthus has learned for purposes of attack what the bee has not learned for purposes of defence. To this difficulty I see only one reply: the one knows without having learned and the other does not know, being incapable of learning.

Let us now examine the motives which induce the Philanthus to kill its bee instead of paralysing it. The murder once committed, it does not release its victim for a moment, but holding it tightly clasped with its six legs pressed against its body, it commences to ravage the corpse. I see it with the utmost brutality rooting with its mandibles in the articulation of the neck, and often also in the more ample articulation of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs; perfectly aware of the fine membrane in that part, although it does not take advantage of the fact when employing its sting, although this vulnerable point is the more accessible of the two breaches in the bee's armour. I see it squeezing the bee's stomach, compressing it with its own abdomen, crushing it as in a vice. The brutality of this manipulation is striking; it shows that there is no more need of care and skill. The bee is a corpse, and a little extra pushing and squeezing will not deteriorate its quality as food, provided there is no effusion of blood; and however rough the treatment, I have never been able to discover the slightest wound.

These various manipulations, above all the compression of the throat, lead to the desired result: the honey in the stomach of the bee ascends to the mouth. I see the drops of honey welling out, lapped up by the glutton as soon as they appear. The bandit greedily takes in its mouth the extended and sugared tongue of the dead insect; then once more it presses the neck and the thorax, and once more applies the pressure of its abdomen to the honey-sac of the bee. The honey oozes forth and is instantly licked up. This odious meal at the expense of the corpse is taken in a truly sybaritic attitude: the Philanthus lies upon its side with the bee between its legs. This atrocious meal lasts often half an hour and longer. Finally the exhausted corpse is abandoned; regretfully, it seems, for from time to time I have seen the ogre return to the feast and repeat its manipulation of the body. After taking a turn round the top of the bell-glass the robber of the dead returns to the victim, squeezes it once more, and licks its mouth until the last trace of honey has disappeared.

The frantic passion of the Philanthus for the honey of the bee is betrayed in another fashion. When the first victim has been exhausted I have introduced a second bee, which has been promptly stabbed under the chin and squeezed as before in order to extract its honey. A third has suffered the same fate without appeasing the bandit. I have offered a fourth, a fifth; all are accepted. My notes record that a Philanthus sacrificed six bees in succession before my eyes, and emptied them all of honey in the approved manner. The killing came to an end not because the glutton was satiated, but because my functions as provider were becoming troublesome; the dry month of August leaves but few insects in the flowerless garden. Six bees emptied of their honey—what a gluttonous meal! Yet the famishing creature would doubtless have welcomed a copious addition thereto had I had the means of furnishing it!

We need not regret the failure of bees upon this occasion; for what I have already written is sufficient testimony of the singular habits of this murderer of bees. I am far from denying that the Philanthus has honest methods of earning its living; I see it among the flowers, no less assiduous than the rest of the Hymenoptera, peacefully drinking from their cups of nectar. The male, indeed, being stingless, knows no other means of supporting himself. The mothers, without neglecting the flowers as a general thing, live by brigandage as well. It is said of the Labba, that pirate of the seas, that it pounces upon sea-birds as they rise from the waves with captured fish in their beaks. With a blow of the beak delivered in the hollow of the stomach, the aggressor forces the victim to drop its prey, and promptly catches it as it falls. The victim at least escapes with nothing worse than a blow at the base of the neck. The Philanthus, less scrupulous, falls upon the bee, stabs it to death and makes it disgorge in order to nourish herself upon its honey.

Nourish, I say, and I do not withdraw the expression. To support my statement I have better reasons than those already presented. In the cages in which various predatory Hymenoptera whose warlike habits I am studying are confined, waiting until I have procured the desired prey—not always an easy proceeding—I have planted a few heads of flowers and a couple of thistle-heads sprinkled with drops of honey, renewed at need. On these my captives feed. In the case of the Philanthus the honeyed flowers, although welcomed, are not indispensable. It is enough if from time to time I place in the cage a few living bees. Half a dozen a day is about the proper allowance. With no other diet than the honey extracted from their victims I keep my specimens of Philanthus for a fortnight and three weeks.

So much is plain: in a state of freedom, when occasion offers, the Philanthus must kill on her own account as she does in captivity. The Odynerus asks nothing of the Chrysomela but a simple condiment, the aromatic juice of the anal pouch; the Philanthus demands a full diet, or at least a notable supplement thereto, in the form of the contents of the stomach. What a hecatomb of bees must not a colony of these pirates sacrifice for their personal consumption, to say nothing of their stores of provisions! I recommend the Philanthus to the vengeance of apiarists.

For the moment we will not look further into the original causes of the crime. Let us consider matters as we know them, with all their real or apparent atrocity. In order to nourish herself the Philanthus levies tribute upon the crop of the bee. This being granted, let us consider the method of the aggressor more closely. She does not paralyse its captives according to the customary rites of the predatory insects; she kills them. Why? To the eyes of understanding the necessity of a sudden death is as clear as day. Without eviscerating the bee, which would result in the deterioration of its flesh considered as food for the larvae; without having recourse to the bloody extirpation of the stomach, the Philanthus intends to obtain its honey. By skilful manipulation, by cunning massage, she must somehow make the bee disgorge. Suppose the bee stung in the rear of the corselet and paralysed. It is deprived of locomotion, but not of vitality. The digestive apparatus, in particular, retains in full, or at least in part, its normal energies, as is proved by the frequent dejections of paralysed victims so long as the intestine is not emptied; a fact notably exemplified by the victims of the Sphex family; helpless creatures which I have before now kept alive for forty days with the aid of a little sugared water. Well! without therapeutic means, without emetics or stomach-pumps, how is a stomach intact and in good order to be persuaded to yield up its contents? That of the bee, jealous of its treasure, will lend itself to such treatment less readily than another. Paralysed, the creature is inert; but there are always internal energies and organic resistances which will not yield to the pressure of the manipulator. In vain would the Philanthus gnaw at the throat and squeeze the flanks; the honey would not return to the mouth as long as a trace of life kept the stomach closed.

Matters are different with a corpse. The springs relax; the muscles yield; the resistance of the stomach ceases, and the vessels containing the honey are emptied by the pressure of the thief. We see, therefore, that the Philanthus is obliged to inflict a sudden death which instantly destroys the contractile power of the organs. Where shall the deadly blow be delivered? The slayer knows better than we, when she pierces the victim beneath the chin. Through the narrow breach in the throat the cerebral ganglions are reached and immediate death ensues.

The examination of these acts of brigandage is not sufficient in view of my incorrigible habit of following every reply by another query, until the granite wall of the unknowable rises before me. Although the Philanthus is skilled in forcing the bee to disgorge, in emptying the crop distended with honey, this diabolical skill cannot be merely an alimentary resource, above all when in common with other insects she has access to the refectory of the flowers. I cannot regard her talents as inspired solely by the desire of a meal obtained by the labour of emptying the stomach of another insect. Something must surely escape us here: the real reason for emptying the stomach. Perhaps a respectable reason is concealed by the horrors I have recorded. What is it?

Every one will understand the vagueness which fills the observer's mind in respect of such a question as this. The reader has the right to be doubtful. I will spare him my suspicions, my gropings for the truth, and the checks encountered in the search, and give him the results of my long inquiry. Everything has its appropriate and harmonious reason. I am too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus commits her profanation of corpses merely to satisfy her appetite. What does the empty stomach mean? May it not—Yes!—But, after all, who knows? Well, let us follow up the scent.

The first care of the mothers is the welfare of the family. So far all we know of the Philanthus concerns her talent for murder. Let us consider her as a mother. We have seen her hunt on her own account; let us now watch her hunt for her offspring, for the race. Nothing is simpler than to distinguish between the two kinds of hunting. When the insect wants a few good mouthfuls of honey and nothing else, she abandons the bee contemptuously when she has emptied its stomach. It is so much valueless waste, which will shrivel where it lies and be dissected by ants. If, on the other hand, she intends to place it in the larder as a provision for her larvae, she clasps it with her two intermediate legs, and, walking on the other four, drags it to and fro along the edge of the bell-glass in search of an exit so that she may fly off with her prey. Having recognised the circular wall as impassable, she climbs its sides, now holding the bee in her mandibles by the antennae, clinging as she climbs to the vertical polished surface with all six feet. She gains the summit of the glass, stays for a little while in the flask-like cavity of the terminal button or handle, returns to the ground, and resumes her circuit of the glass and her climbing, relinquishing the bee only after an obstinate attempt to escape with it. The persistence with which the Philanthus retains her clasp upon the encumbering burden shows plainly that the game would go straight to the larder were the insect at liberty.

Those bees intended for the larvae are stung under the chin like the others; they are true corpses; they are manipulated, squeezed, exhausted of their honey, just as the others. There is no difference in the method of capture nor in their after-treatment.

As captivity might possibly result in a few anomalies of action, I decided to inquire how matters went forward in the open. In the neighbourhood of some colonies of Philanthidae I lay in wait, watching for perhaps a longer time than the question justified, as it was already settled by what occurred in captivity. My scrupulous watching at various times was rewarded. The majority of the hunters immediately entered their nests, carrying the bees pressed against their bodies; some halted on the neighbouring undergrowth; and these I saw treating the bee in the usual manner, and lapping the honey from its mouth. After these preparations the corpse was placed in the larder. All doubt was thus destroyed: the bees provided for the larvae are previously carefully emptied of their honey.

Since we are dealing with the subject, let us take the opportunity of inquiring into the customs of the Philanthus in a state of freedom. Making use of her victims when absolutely lifeless, so that they would putrefy in the course of a few days, this hunter of bees cannot adopt the customs of certain insects which paralyse their prey, and fill their cellars before laying an egg. She must surely be obliged to follow the method of the Bembex, whose larva receives, at intervals, the necessary nourishment; the amount increasing as the larva grows. The facts confirm this deduction. I spoke just now of the tediousness of my watching when watching the colonies of the Philanthus. It was perhaps even more tedious than when I was keeping an eye upon the Bembex. Before the burrows of Cerceris tuberculus and other devourers of the weevil, and before that of the yellow-winged Sphex, the slayer of crickets, there is plenty of distraction, owing to the busy movements of the community. The mothers have scarcely entered the nest before they are off again, returning quickly with fresh prey, only to set out once more. The going and coming is almost continuous until the storehouse is full.

The burrows of the Philanthus know nothing of such animation, even in a populous colony. In vain my vigils prolonged themselves into whole mornings or afternoons, and only very rarely does the mother who has entered with a bee set forth upon a second expedition. Two captures by the same huntress is the most that I have seen in my long watches. Once the family is provided with sufficient food for the moment the mother postpones further hunting trips until hunting becomes necessary, and busies herself with digging and burrowing in her underground dwelling. Little cells are excavated, and I see the rubbish from them gradually pushed up to the surface. With that exception there is no sign of activity; it is as though the burrow were deserted.

To lay the nest bare is not easy. The burrow penetrates to a depth of about three feet in a compact soil; sometimes in a vertical, sometimes in a horizontal direction. The spade and pick, wielded by hands more vigorous but less expert than my own, are indispensable; but the conduct of the excavation is anything but satisfactory. At the extremity of the long gallery—it seems as though the straw I use for sounding would never reach the end—we finally discover the cells, egg-shaped cavities with the longer axis horizontal. Their number and their mutual disposition escape me.

Some already contain the cocoon—slender and translucid, like that of the Cerceris, and, like it, recalling the shape of certain homoeopathic phials, with oval bodies surmounted by a tapering neck. By the extremity of the neck, which is blackened and hardened by the dejecta of the larvae, the cocoon is fixed to the end of the cell without any other support. It reminds one of a short club, planted by the end of the handle, in a line with the horizontal axis of the cell. Other cells contain the larva in a stage more or less advanced. The grub is eating the last victim proffered; around it lie the remains of food already consumed. Others, again, show me a bee, a single bee, still intact, and having an egg deposited on the under-side of the thorax. This bee represents the first instalment of rations; others will follow as the grub matures. My expectations are thus confirmed; as with Bembex, slayer of Diptera, so Philanthus, killer of bees, lays her egg upon the first body stored, and completes, at intervals, the provisioning of the cells.

The problem of the dead bee is elucidated; there remains the other problem, of incomparable interest—Why, before they are given over to the larvae, are the bees robbed of their honey? I have said, and I repeat, that the killing and emptying of the bee cannot be explained solely by the gluttony of the Philanthus. To rob the worker of its booty is nothing; such things are seen every day; but to slaughter it in order to empty its stomach—no, gluttony cannot be the only motive. And as the bees placed in the cells are squeezed dry no less than the others, the idea occurs to me that as a beefsteak garnished with confitures is not to every one's taste, so the bee sweetened with honey may well be distasteful or even harmful to the larvae of the Philanthus. What would the grub do if, replete with blood and flesh, it were to find under its mandibles the honey-bag of the bee?—if, gnawing at random, it were to open the bees stomach and so drench its game with syrup? Would it approve of the mixture? Would the little ogre pass without repugnance from the gamey flavour of a corpse to the scent of flowers? To affirm or deny is useless. We must see. Let us see.

I take the young larvae of the Philanthus, already well matured, but instead of serving them with the provisions buried in their cells I offer them game of my own catching—bees that have filled themselves with nectar among the rosemary bushes. My bees, killed by crushing the head, are thankfully accepted, and at first I see nothing to justify my suspicions. Then my nurslings languish, show themselves disdainful of their food, give a negligent bite here and there, and finally, one and all, die beside their uncompleted meal. All my attempts miscarry; not once do I succeed in rearing my larvae as far as the stage of spinning the cocoon. Yet I am no novice in my duties as dry-nurse. How many pupils have passed through my hands and have reached the final stage in my old sardine-boxes as well as in their native burrows! I shall draw no conclusions from this check, which my scruples may attribute to some unknown cause. Perhaps the atmosphere of my cabinet and the dryness of the sand serving them for a bed have been too much for my nurslings, whose tender skins are used to the warm moisture of the subsoil. Let us try another method.

To decide positively whether honey is or is not repugnant to the grubs of the Philanthus was hardly practicable by the method just explained. The first meals consisted of flesh, and after that nothing in particular occurred. The honey is encountered later, when the bee is largely consumed. If hesitation and repugnance were manifested at this point they came too late to be conclusive; the sickness of the larvae might be due to other causes, known or unknown. We must offer honey at the very beginning, before artificial rearing has spoilt the grub's appetite. To offer pure honey would, of course, be useless; no carnivorous creature would touch it, even were it starving. I must spread the honey on meat; that is, I must smear the dead bee with honey, lightly varnishing it with a camel's-hair brush.

Under these conditions the problem is solved with the first few mouthfuls. The grub, having bitten on the honeyed bee, draws back as though disgusted; hesitates for a long time; then, urged by hunger, begins again; tries first on one side, then on another; in the end it refuses to touch the bee again. For a few days it pines upon its rations, which are almost intact, then dies. As many as are subjected to the same treatment perish in the same way.

Do they simply die of hunger in the presence of food which their appetites reject, or are they poisoned by the small amount of honey absorbed at the first bites? I cannot say; but, whether poisonous or merely repugnant, the bee smeared with honey is always fatal to them; a fact which explains more clearly than the unfavourable circumstances of the former experiment my lack of success with the freshly killed bees.

This refusal to touch honey, whether poisonous or repugnant, is connected with principles of alimentation too general to be a gastronomic peculiarity of the Philanthus grub. Other carnivorous larvae—at least in the series of the Hymenoptera—must share it. Let us experiment. The method need not be changed. I exhume the larvae when in a state of medium growth, to avoid the vicissitudes of extreme youth; I collect the bodies of the grubs and insects which form their natural diet and smear each body with honey, in which condition I return them to the larvae. A distinction is apparent: all the larvae are not equally suited to my experiment. Those larvae must be rejected which are nourished upon one single corpulent insect, as is that of the Scolia. The grub attacks its prey at a determined point, plunges its head and neck into the body of the insect, skilfully divides the entrails in order to keep the remains fresh until its meal is ended, and does not emerge from the opening until all is consumed but the empty skin.

To interrupt the larva with the object of smearing the interior of its prey with honey is doubly objectionable; I might extinguish the lingering vitality which keeps putrefaction at bay in the victim, and I might confuse the delicate art of the larva, which might not be able to recover the lode at which it was working or to distinguish between those parts which are lawfully and properly eaten and those which must not be consumed until a later period. As I have shown in a previous volume, the grub of the Scolia has taught me much in this respect. The only larvae acceptable for this experiment are those which are fed on a number of small insects, which are attacked without any special art, dismembered at random, and quickly consumed. Among such larvae I have experimented with those provided by chance—those of various Bembeces, fed on Diptera; those of the Palaris, whose diet consists of a large variety of Hymenoptera; those of the Tachytus, provided with young crickets; those of the Odynerus, fed upon larvae of the Chrysomela; those of the sand-dwelling Cerceris, endowed with a hecatomb of weevils. As will be seen, both consumers and consumed offer plenty of variety. Well, in every case their proper diet, seasoned with honey, is fatal. Whether poisoned or disgusted, they all die in a few days.

A strange result! Honey, the nectar of the flowers, the sole diet of the apiary under its two forms and the sole nourishment of the predatory insect in its adult phase, is for the larva of the same insect an object of insurmountable disgust, and probably a poison. The transfiguration of the chrysalis surprises me less than this inversion of the appetite. What change occurs in the stomach of the insect that the adult should passionately seek that which the larva refuses under peril of death? It is no question of organic debility unable to support a diet too substantial, too hard, or too highly spiced. The grubs which consume the larva of the Cetoniae, for example (the Rose-chafers), those which feed upon the leathery cricket, and those whose diet is rich in nitrobenzine, must assuredly have complacent gullets and adaptable stomachs. Yet these robust eaters die of hunger or poison for no greater cause than a drop of syrup, the lightest diet imaginable, adapted to the weakness of extreme youth, and a delicacy to the adult! What a gulf of obscurity in the stomach of a miserable worm!

These gastronomic experiments called for a counter-proof. The carnivorous grub is killed by honey. Is the honey-fed grub, inversely, killed by carnivorous diet? Here, again, we must make certain exceptions, observe a certain choice, as in the previous experiments. It would obviously be courting a flat refusal to offer a heap of young crickets to the larvae of the Anthophorus and the Osmia, for example; the honey-fed grub would not bite such food. It would be absolutely useless to make such an experiment. We must find the equivalent of the bee smeared with honey; that is, we must offer the larva its ordinary food with a mixture of animal matter added. I shall experiment with albumen, as provided by the egg of the hen; albumen being an isomer of fibrine, which is the principal element of all flesh diet.

Osmia tricornis will lend itself to my experiment better than any other insect on account of its dry honey, or bee-bread, which is largely formed of flowery pollen. I knead it with the albumen, graduating the dose of the latter so that its weight largely exceeds that of the bee-bread. Thus I obtain pastes of various degrees of consistency, but all firm enough to support the larva without danger of immersion. With too fluid a mixture there would be a danger of death by drowning. Finally, on each cake of albuminous paste I install a larva of medium growth.

This diet is not distasteful; far from it. The grubs attack it without hesitation and devour it with every appearance of a normal appetite. Matters could not go better if the food had not been modified according to my recipes. All is eaten; even the portions which I feared contained an excessive proportion of albumen. Moreover—a matter of still greater importance—the larvae of the Osmia fed in this manner attain their normal growth and spin their cocoons, from which adults issue in the following year. Despite the albuminous diet the cycle of evolution completes itself without mishap.

What are we to conclude from all this? I confess I am embarrassed. Omne vivum ex ovo, says the physiologist. All animals are carnivorous in their first beginnings; they are formed and nourished at the expense of the egg, in which albumen predominates. The highest, the mammals, adhere to this diet for a considerable time; they live by the maternal milk, rich in casein, another isomer of albumen. The gramnivorous nestling is fed first upon worms and grubs, which are best adapted to the delicacy of its stomach; many newly born creatures among the lower orders, being immediately left to their own devices, live on animal diet. In this way the original method of alimentation is continued—the method which builds flesh out of flesh and makes blood out of blood with no chemical processes but those of simple reconstruction. In maturity, when the stomach is more robust, a vegetable diet may be adopted, involving a more complex chemistry, although the food itself is more easily obtained. To milk succeeds fodder; to the worm, seeds and grain; to the dead or paralysed insects of the natal burrow, the nectar of flowers.

Here is a partial explanation of the double system of the Hymenoptera with their carnivorous larvae—the system of dead or paralysed insects followed by honey. But here the point of interrogation, already encountered elsewhere, erects itself once again. Why is the larva of the Osmia, which thrives upon albumen, actually fed upon honey during its early life? Why is a vegetable diet the rule in the hives of bees from the very commencement, when the other members of the same series live upon animal food?

If I were a "transformist" how I should delight in this question! Yes, I should say: yes, by the fact of its germ every animal is originally carnivorous. The insect in particular makes a beginning with albuminoid materials. Many larvae adhere to the alimentation present in the egg, as do many adult insects also. But the struggle to fill the belly, which is actually the struggle for life, demands something better than the precarious chances of the chase. Man, at first an eager hunter of game, collected flocks and became a shepherd in order to profit by his possessions in time of dearth. Further progress inspired him to till the earth and sow; a method which assured him of a certain living. Evolution from the defective to the mediocre, and from the mediocre to the abundant, has led to the resources of agriculture.

The lower animals have preceded us on the way of progress. The ancestors of the Philanthus, in the remote ages of the lacustrian tertiary formations, lived by capturing prey in both phases—both as larvae and as adults; they hunted for their own benefit as well as for the family. They did not confine themselves to emptying the stomach of the bee, as do their descendants to-day; they devoured the victim entire. From beginning to end they remained carnivorous. Later there were fortunate innovators, whose race supplanted the more conservative element, who discovered an inexhaustible source of nourishment, to be obtained without painful search or dangerous conflict: the saccharine exudation of the flowers. The wasteful system of living upon prey, by no means favourable to large populations, has been preserved for the feeble larvae; but the vigorous adult has abandoned it for an easier and more prosperous existence. Thus the Philanthus of our own days was gradually developed; thus was formed the double system of nourishment practised by the various predatory insects which we know.

The bee has done still better; from the moment of leaving the egg it dispenses completely with chance-won aliments. It has invented honey, the food of its larvae. Renouncing the chase for ever, and becoming exclusively agricultural, this insect has acquired a degree of moral and physical prosperity that the predatory species are far from sharing. Hence the flourishing colonies of the Anthophorae, the Osmiae, the Eucerae, the Halicti, and other makers of honey, while the hunters of prey work in isolation; hence the societies in which the bee displays its admirable talents, the supreme expression of instinct.

This is what I should say if I were a "transformist." All this is a chain of highly logical deductions, and it hangs together with a certain air of reality, such as we like to look for in a host of "transformist" arguments which are put forward as irrefutable. Well, I make a present of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, and without the least regret; I do not believe a single word of it, and I confess my profound ignorance of the origin of the twofold system of diet.

One thing I do see more clearly after all my experiments and research: the tactics of the Philanthus. As a witness of its ferocious feasting, the true motive of which was unknown to me, I treated it to all the unfavourable epithets I could think of; called it assassin, bandit, pirate, robber of the dead. Ignorance is always abusive; the man who does not know is full of violent affirmations and malign interpretations. Undeceived by the facts, I hasten to apologise and express my esteem for the Philanthus. In emptying the stomach of the bee the mother is performing the most praiseworthy of all duties; she is guarding her family against poison. If she sometimes kills on her own account and abandons the body after exhausting it of honey, I dare not call her action a crime. When the habit has once been formed of emptying the bee's crop for the best of motives, the temptation is great to do so with no other excuse than hunger. Moreover—who can say?—perhaps there is always some afterthought that the larvae might profit by the sacrifice. Although not carried into effect the intention excuses the act.

I therefore withdraw my abusive epithets in order to express my admiration of the creature's maternal logic. Honey would be harmful to the grubs. How does the mother know that honey, in which she herself delights, is noxious to her young? To this question our knowledge has no reply. But honey, as we have seen, would endanger the lives of the grubs. The bees must therefore be emptied of honey before they are fed to them. The process must be effected without wounding the victim, for the larva must receive the latter fresh and moist; and this would be impracticable if the insect were paralysed on account of the natural resistance of the organs. The bee must therefore be killed outright instead of being paralysed, otherwise the honey could not be removed. Instantaneous death can be assured only by a lesion of the primordial centre of life. The sting must therefore pierce the cervical ganglions; the centre of innervation upon which the rest of the organism is dependent. This can only be reached in one way: through the neck. Here it is that the sting will be inserted; and here it is inserted in a breach in the armour no larger than a pin's head. Suppress a single link of this closely knit chain, and the Philanthus reared upon the flesh of bees becomes an impossibility.