170 INSECT LIFE xn 



game — everything, when to utilise them all that was 

 needed would have been to take the prey by one 

 foot. Thus this rival of Flourens, who just now 

 startled us by her science when pressing the brain to 

 induce lethargy, is invariably dull when the least 

 unusual event occurs. The Sphex, which knows so 

 well how to reach the thoracic ganglia of a victim 

 with her sting, and those of the brain with her 

 mandibles, and which makes such a judicious differ- 

 ence between a poisoned sting that would destroy 

 the vital influence of the nerves, and compression 

 causing only momentary torpor, cannot seize her prey 

 in a new way. To understand that a foot may be 

 taken instead of the antennae is impossible ; nothing 

 will do but the antennae or another filament of the 

 head or one of the palpi. For want of these ropes 

 her whole race would perish, unable to surmount this 

 trifling difficulty. 



Second experiment. — The Sphex is busy closing 

 her burrow where the prey is stored and the egg 

 laid. With her fore tarsi she sweeps backward 

 before her door, and launches from the entrance a 

 spurt of dust, which passes beneath her, and springs 

 up behind in a parabolic curve as continuous as if 

 it were a slender stream of some liquid, so rapidly 

 does she sweep. From time to time she chooses 

 some sand grains with her mandibles, strengthening 

 materials inserted singly in the dusty mass. To 

 consolidate this she beats it with her head, and heaps 

 it with her mandibles. Walled up by this masonry, 

 the entrance rapidly disappears. In the midst of 

 the work I intervene. Having put the Sphex aside 

 I clear out the short gallery carefully with the blade 



