76 INSECT LIFE y 



Weevils, the effect is instantaneous. Every movement 

 stops suddenly, without any convulsion, as soon as 

 the fatal drop has touched the nerve centres. The 

 sting of the Cerceris does not produce prompter 

 extinction. Nothing can be more striking than 

 this sudden immobility in a vigorous Scarabaeus 

 sacer, but the likeness between the effects produced 

 by the dart of the Cerceris and the steel pen charged 

 with ammonia does not stop here. Scarabaeids, Bupres- 

 tids, and Weevils artificially stung, in spite of their 

 complete immobility, preserve for three weeks, one 

 month, or even two, the perfect flexibility of every 

 joint and the normal freshness of the interior organs. 

 With them defecation takes place on the first days 

 as in the normal condition, and movement can be 

 excited by the Voltaic current. In a word, they 

 behave exactly as do Coleoptera sacrificed by the 

 Cerceris. There is complete identity between the 

 state into which she plunges her victims and that 

 produced at will by injecting ammonia into the 

 nerve centres of the thorax. Now, as it is im- 

 possible to attribute the perfect preservation of the 

 insect during so long a time to the drop injected, 

 one must altogether reject the notion of an anti- 

 septic fluid, and grant that in spite of utter immo- 

 bility the creature is not really dead. A spark of 

 life exists, keeping the organs for some time in 

 normal freshness, but dying out by degrees and 

 leaving them at last subject to corruption. More- 

 over, the ammonia in some cases produces extinction 

 of movement in the feet only, and then the deleterious 

 action of the fluid having doubtless not extended 

 far enough, the antennae preserve some mobility, 



