Reflexes, Instincts, and Intelligence 645 



below, on one side, and finds nothing to seize. A desperate attempt is made; 

 opening wide her mandibles she tries to grasp the ephippiger by the head, 

 but her pincers cannot surround anything so large, and slip off the round, 

 polished skull. She tries several times in vain; at length, convinced of the 

 futility of her efforts, she draws back, and seems to renounce further attempts. 

 S..e appears discouraged — at least she smooths her wings with her hind feet, 

 while with her front tarsi, first passing them through her mouth, she washes 

 her eyes, a sign among Hymenoptera, as I believe, that they give a 

 thing up. 



"Yet there were points by which the ephipi)iger might be seized and 

 dragged as easily as by the antenna; and palpi. There are the six feet, there 

 is the ovipositor— all organs slender enough to be thoroughly grasped and 

 used as traction ropes. I own that the easiest way of getting the prey into 

 the storehouse is to introduce it head first by the antenna;; yet, drawn by 

 one foot, especially a front one, it would enter almost as easily, for the orifice 

 is wide and the passage short, even if there be one. How came it then that 

 the Sphex never once tried to seize one of the six tarsi or the point of the 

 ovipositor, while she did make the impossible, absurd attempt to grip with 

 the mandibles far too short the huge head of her prey? Perhaps the idea 

 did not occur to her. Let us try to suggest it. I place under her mandi- 

 Ijles first a foot, then the end of the abdominal sabre. She refuses obsti- 

 nately to bite; my repeated solicitations come to nothing. A very odd kind 

 of hunter this to be so embarrassed by her game and unable to think of 

 seizing it by a foot if it cannot be taken by the horns! Perhaps my pres- 

 ence and all these unusual events may have troubled her faculties; let us 

 leave her to herself, with her burrow and ephippiger, and give her time to 

 consider and to imagine in the calm of solitude some means of managing 

 the business. I walked away and returned in a couple of hours to find the 

 Sphex gone, the burrow open, and the ephippiger where I had laid it. The 

 conclusion is that the Sphex tried nothing, but departed, abandoning home, 

 game — ever}thing, when to utilize 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 lethar^v, 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 judicious 

 difference 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 antenna^ or another fila- 

 ment of the head or one of the palpi. For want of these ropes her whole 

 race would perish, unable to surmount this trifling difficulty. 



