The Hunting Wasps 



cerns the one suitable spot on the victim and 

 selects it for her egg! 



I have reared Sphex-grubs by giving them, 

 one after the other, the Crickets taken from 

 the cells ; and I was then able to follow day 

 by day the rapid progress of my nurselings. 

 The first Cricket, the one on whom the egg 

 was laid, is attacked, as I have said, near the 

 point where the huntress administered her 

 second sting, that is to say, between the first 

 and second pair of legs. In a few days, the 

 young larva has dug in the victim's breast a 

 hollow large enough to admit half its body. 

 It is not uncommon to see the Cricket, bitten 

 to the quick, uselessly waving his antennae and 

 his abdominal threads, opening and closing 

 his mandibles on space and even moving a 

 leg. But the enemy is safe and is ransacking 

 his entrails with impunity. What an awful 

 nightmare for the paralysed Cricket ! 



The first ration is finished in six or seven 

 days' time; none of it remains but the frame- 

 work of skin, with all its parts more or less in 

 position. The larva, whose length is now 

 twelve millimetres,^ leaves the Cricket's body 

 through the hole in the thorax which it made 

 to start with. During this operation, it 



^Nearly half an inch. — Translator's Note. 

 96 



