The Ignorance of Instinct 



everything, her home and her game, when, to 

 utilize them both, all that she had to do was 

 to take her prey by one leg. And so this 

 rival of Flourens, who but now was startling 

 us with her cleverness as she dexterously 

 squeezed her victim's brain to produce 

 lethargy, becomes incredibly helpless in the 

 simplest case outside her usual habits. She, 

 who so well knows how to attack a victim's 

 thoracic ganglia with her sting and its cervi- 

 cal ganglia with her mandibles; she, who 

 makes such a judicious difference between a 

 poisoned prick annihilating the vital influence 

 of the nerves for ever and a pressure causing 

 only momentary torpor, cannot grip her prey 

 by this part when it is made impossible for 

 her to grip it by any other. To understand 

 that she can take a leg instead of an antenna 

 is utterly beyond her powers. She must have 

 the antenna, or some other string attached to 

 the head, such as one of the palpi. If these 

 cords did not exist, her race would perish, 

 for lack of the capacity to solve this trivial 

 problem. 



Experiment II 



The Wasp is engaged in closing her bur- 

 row, where the prey has been stored and the 

 197 



