The Hunting Wasps 



that the unfortunate beasts still retain the 

 motions of the heart and of the respiratory 

 organs; and, in such cases, they suffer a 

 reaction under the knife; they utter faint 

 sounds of pain and move their limbs, 

 while already half-flayed and disembowelled. 

 Nothing could be more painful than the sight 

 of all those animals skinned alive, cut up and 

 transformed by those men, covered with 

 blood, who run about in all directions." 



The murderous methods of the saladeiro 

 are an exact repetition of what I had seen 

 in the slaughter-house. In both these lethal 

 workshops, they pierce the vertebral mar- 

 row, at the base of the skull. The Ammo- 

 phila operates in a similar fashion, with this 

 difference, that her surgery is much more 

 complex, much more difficult, because of the 

 peculiar organization of her victim. The 

 honours are on her side again when we con- 

 sider the delicacy of the result obtained. 

 Her caterpillar is not a corpse, like the Ox 

 whose spinal cord is cut; it is alive, but in- 

 capable of movement. The insect here is 

 man's superior in all respects. 



Now how did the butcher of our parts and 

 the desnucador of the pampas light upon the 

 396 



