The Hunting Wasps 



which he certainly would do if he were at- 

 tacked in the normal position, as are the big 

 Weevils of the Great Cerceris. His spurred 

 legs, mastered by the Sphex' fore-feet, can- 

 not act as offensive weapons either; and his 

 mandibles, kept at a distance by the Wasp's 

 hind-legs, open in wide menace without being 

 able to seize a thing. But it is not enough 

 for the Sphex to render her Cricket incapable 

 of hurting her; she must also hold him so 

 firmly pinioned that he cannot make the 

 slightest movement capable of diverting the 

 sting from the points at which the poison is 

 to be injected; and it is probably with the ob- 

 ject of stilling the movements of the abdo- 

 men that one of its terminal threads is 

 grasped. No, if a fertile imagination had 

 allowed itself free scope to invent a plan of 

 attack at will, it could not have contrived any- 

 thing better; and it is open to doubt whether 

 the athletes of the classic palestra, when 

 grappling with an adversary, boasted more 

 scientific attitudes. 



I have said that the sting is driven several 

 times into the patient's body: first under the 

 neck, then behind the prothorax, next and 

 lastly towards the top of the abdomen. It 

 is in these three dagger-thrusts that the in- 

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