The Hunting Wasps 



year, equally persistent in a fruitless pro- 

 cedure. The illusion was simply growing 

 worse, when good fortune brought me into 

 the presence of another colony of Sphex- 

 wasps, in a district at some distance from 

 the first. I recommenced my attempts. 

 After two or three experiments with results 

 similar to those which I had so often ob- 

 tained, the Sphex got astride of the Cricket, 

 seized him with her mandibles by the an- 

 tennae and at once dragged him Into the bur- 

 row. Who was the fool now? Why, the 

 experimenter foiled by the clever Wasp I 

 At the other holes, her neighbours likewise, 

 one sooner, another later, discovered my 

 treachery and entered the dwelling with the 

 game. Instead of persisting in abandoning 

 it on the threshold to seize it afterwards. 

 What did all this mean? The colony which 

 I was now Inspecting, descended from an- 

 other stock — for the children return to the 

 site selected by their parents — was cleverer 

 than the colony of the year before. Craft is 

 handed down: there are tribes that are 

 sharper-witted and tribes that are duller-wlt- 

 ted, apparently according to the faculties of 

 their elders. With the Sphex as with us, the 

 intellect differs with the province. 

 78 



