68 INSECT LIFE v 



an insect by stamping brutally on it, but to kill it 

 neatly leaving no sign is no easy operation, within 

 every one's power. How many of us would be at 

 our wits' end if we had to kill on the spot, without 

 crushing it, a little creature so tenacious of life that 

 even beheaded it still goes on struggling ! One 

 must have been a practical entomologist before 

 thinking of asphyxiation, and here, again, success 

 would be doubtful with the primitive methods of 

 vapour of benzine or burnt sulphur. In this 

 deleterious atmosphere the insect struggles too long, 

 and tarnishes its brightness. One must have re- 

 course to more heroic methods — for instance, to the 

 terrible exhalations of prussic acid slowly disengaging 

 themselves from strips of paper impregnated with 

 cyanide of potassium, or better still, as being with- 

 out danger to the collector, to the thunderbolt of 

 vapour of bisulphide of carbon. It requires a real art, 

 an art calling to its aid the redoubtable arsenal of 

 chemistry, to kill an insect neatly ; to do that 

 is what the elegant method of the Cerceris brings 

 about so quickly, if we admit the stupid supposition 

 that her prey really becomes a dead body. 



A dead body ! But that is by no means the 

 diet of the larvae, little ogres greedy for fresh meat, 

 to whom game ever so slightly tainted would inspire 

 insurmountable disgust. They must have fresh 

 meat with no high taste — that first sign of decay. 

 Yet the prey cannot be laid up alive in the cell like 

 animals destined to furnish fresh meat to the crew 

 and passengers of a vessel. What would become of 

 a delicate egg laid among living food? What would be- 

 come of the feeble larva, a worm bruised by the slightest 



