The Hunting Wasps 



adroit dagger-thrust of a Cerceris or a 

 Sphex. The question whether they are alive 

 or dead can therefore be decided only ac- 

 cording to the manner in which the victims 

 keep fresh. 



Placed in little screws of paper or in glass 

 tubes, the Crickets and Grasshoppers of the 

 Sphex, the caterpillars of the Ammophilae 

 and the Beetles and Weevils of the Cer- 

 ceres preserve their flexibility of limb, their 

 freshness of colouring and the normal condi- 

 tion of their intestines for weeks and months. 

 They are not corpses but bodies sunk in a 

 lethargy from which there is no awaking. 

 The Flies of the Bembex behave quite differ- 

 ently. The Eristales, the Syrphi — in short 

 all those whose livery is at all brightly-col- 

 oured — soon lose the brilliancy of their at- 

 tire. The eyes of certain Gad-flies, magnifi- 

 cently gilded, with three purple bands, very 

 quickly grow pale and dim, like the eyes of a 

 dying man. All these Flies, large and small, 

 when placed in little paper bags through which 

 the air circulates freely, dry up in two or 

 three days and become brittle; all, when pre- 

 served against evaporation in glass tubes in 

 which the air is stationary, go mouldy and 

 decay. They are dead, therefore, really and 

 296 



