156 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



Her posture of attack, which is very different to that of 

 the paralysers, is infallibly fatal to the victim. Whether 

 she delivers the attack in the erect position or prone, she 

 holds the bee before her, head to head and thorax to thorax. 

 In this position it suffices to flex the abdomen in order 

 to reach the joint of the neck, and to plunge the sting 

 obliquely upwards into the head of the captive. If the 

 bee were seized in the inverse position, or if the sting 

 were to go slightly astray, the results would be totally 

 different ; the sting, penetrating the bee in a downward 

 direction, would poison the first thoracic ganglion and 

 provoke a partial paralysis only. What art, to destroy a 

 miserable bee 1 In what fencing-school did the slayer 

 learn that terrible upward thrust beneath the chin ? 

 And as she has learned it, how is it that her victim, so 

 learned in matters of architecture, so conversant with the 

 politics of Socialism, has so far learned nothing in her own 

 defence ? As vigorous as the aggressor, she also carries 

 a rapier, which is even more formidable and more pain- 

 ful in its results — at all events, when my finger is the 

 victim 1 For centuries and centuries Philanthus has 

 stored her cellars with the corpses of bees, yet the 

 innocent victim submits, and the annual decimation of 

 her race has not taught her how to deliver herself from 

 the scourge by a well-directed thrust. I am afraid I shall 

 never succeed in understanding how it is that the assailant 

 has acquired her genius for sudden murder while the 

 assailed, better armed and no less powerful, uses her dagger 

 at random, and so far without effect. If the one has 

 learned something from the prolonged exercise of the 

 attack, then the other should also have learned something 

 from the prolonged exercise of defence, for attack and 



