ENTOMOLOGICAL SOUVENIRS. 47 



of a swallow-tail butterfly. The luaterials lay ready on the hearth, 

 but the spark to kindle them had been lacking. The accidental 

 perusal of Leon Dufour's pamphlet was that spark. I had a mental 

 revelation. So, then, to arrange lovely beetles in a cork box, to name 

 and classify, was not the whole of science ; there was something far 

 superior, viz., the close study of the structure, and still more of the 

 faculties of insects." One cannot doubt that the perusal of a book 

 like that of Fabre will open up to many a young naturalist horizons 

 whose very existence he had never guessed, and will throw wide open 

 the gates of a new world where henceforward he will use his mental 

 powers, possibly in a direction in which they have hitherto lain 

 entirely dormant. 



To mention in a haphazard manner a fact here and there in the 

 book would be purposeless, and leave probably an entirely wrong im- 

 pression. The author's detailed observations made upon Scarabaeus 

 mcer are excellent. He criticises clearly and concisely the conclusions 

 of Blanchard, shows that Scambaois saccr does not call his friends to 

 help him in difficult places, and proves that there is neither com- 

 munity of labour nor community of family, that the eager fellow- 

 worker, under pretence of giving a helping hand, cherishes the project 

 of carrying off the ball of dung at the earliest opportunity. He has seen 

 pillagers and pillaged, and nothing else, and if a number of beetles 

 surround the same ball it means battle, and he concludes that, outside of 

 the cares of maternity — cares in which it almost always shows itself 

 admirable — the insect, unless, indeed, it lives in society, like bees and 

 ants and some others, thinks of and cares for nothing but itself. His 

 account of the cells in which the young Scarabaeus is reared is alto- 

 gether admirable. 



But it is in his description of the habits of the Hymenoptera that 

 Fabre excels. The thrilling way in which he carried out his experi- 

 ments on the habits of Ccn-eris buin-estica, the manner in which he 

 proves that Dufour was wrong in his views that the poison injected 

 into the Buprestids was an antiseptic preserving the latter from 

 decay till the larva of Cerceris had devoured it, and how he him- 

 self shows that the poison does not kill, that life is still there — 

 life latent and passive — vegetative life, the destruction of the nervous 

 centres that control movement and volition, yet allowing the functions 

 of the viscera to proceed sufficiently to maintain a deep slumber, 

 which will never be broken, and yet which is not death, ceasing 

 only when the intestine is empty, are all equally delightful. His 

 account of the hunting of Cfrccris tubcindata, which preys on the 

 weevil, CleonuK opldJiahnicm, the mining feats it accomplishes in 

 storing its prey for its young, the reason why ('leoniiH oplitliahnivuH is 

 almost exclusively chosen (one ( '. alternant and a single Jjot/ii/rodercs 

 albidus torm the only exception), the more varied larder of Ccrccris 

 arcnaria, Ccnrris aiirita, Ccrceris frrreri, ('. ijuadyicincta, ('. labiata, 

 and ('. jidii, whilst Cerceris ornata brings up its family on Hymenop- 

 tera, are exceedingly interesting. The stored weevils, like the stored 

 Buprestids, remain for days (sometimes for weeks) perfectly fresh, 

 though permanently motionless. No less stimulating is his description 

 of the habits of Spltcx jlavipennis, which hunts field crickets, and here 

 one meets with another robber, Tachijtes nii/ra, which he found to lay 

 its eggs in the store laid up by the Sp/tcr, the latter evidently afraid to 

 drive it from the burrow it had usurped. Tar/ii/frs dhxnlfta, banded 



