IV CERCERIS TUBERCULATA 65 



one convulsive movement, with no motion of the 

 limbs such as accompany the death of an animal, 

 the victim fell motionless for ever, as if annihilated. 

 It was at once wonderful and terrible in its rapidity. 

 Then the assassin turned the Weevil on its back, 

 placing herself body to body with it, her legs on 

 either side of it, and flew off. Three times I renewed 

 the experiment with my three Weevils, and the same 

 scene was always enacted. 



Of course, each time I gave the Cerceris back her 

 first prey and withdrew my Cleonus to examine it at 

 greater leisure. This examination only confirmed my 

 opinion of the terrible skill of the assassin. It is 

 impossible to find the slightest trace of a wound, or 

 the smallest flow of vital liquids from the point which 

 was struck. But the most striking thing is the rapid, 

 complete annihilation of all movement. Vainly did 

 I seek even immediately after the murder for any 

 trace of sensibility in the three Weevils done to 

 death under my eyes — neither pinching nor pricking 

 provoked it ; to do so required the artificial means 

 already mentioned. Thus these robust Cleonus, 

 which, pierced alive with a pin and fixed by a 

 collector on his fatal sheet of cork, would have 

 struggled for days, weeks, nay, whole months, 

 instantly lose all power of motion from the effect 

 of a little prick which inoculates them with a minute 

 drop of poison. Chemistry knows none so active in 

 so small a dose ; scarcely could prussic acid produce 

 such an effect, if, indeed, it could do so at all. 

 It is not then to toxology, but to physiology 

 and anatomy that we must turn to find the cause 

 of such instantaneous catalepsy; it is not so much 



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