PARALYZED PROVENDER 439 



is eaten alive, but from the first there is never a sign of pro- 

 test, never a twinge of pain. 



As an experiment, I secured several other spiders para- 

 lyzed by the same wasp whose grub I have described at its 

 meal, and subjected them to various tests. One I denude 

 of its legs, clipping them off at different lengths, thereby 

 cutting through eight different nerves. From the second I 

 clip the palpi, severing the nerves, and into the abdomen 

 of the third I thrust a slender needle. Throughout these 

 gross indignities the spiders lie quite motionless. There is no 

 contracting of leg stumps, no drawing in of injured palpi, 

 no quiver of punctured body. There is no response, no feel- 

 ing in the creatures. 



Such is the first condition of paralysis. We find it in a 

 host of victims. The white-footed wasp, the blue huntress, 

 the black reed-wasps and many others go in quest of the 

 spider, another wasp takes frog-hoppers, still another, lo- 

 custs, and there are many others that I will not mention. 

 They are a merciful crowd. Under the respective jaws of 

 their grubs, the victims lie completely paralyzed, relieved 

 from the tortures of gradual execution. 



The second form of paralysis is, as I have stated, much 

 more rarely met with. At the present time I know of only 

 two wasps that afflict their prey in this manner, but they will 

 do very well as examples. One is the roach-killer (Chapter 

 XXVI), which stores her earthen cells with wood-roaches, 

 the other, a tiny wasp that supplies her maggots with a 

 cricket each. Her nest is a hollow reed lying upon the 

 ground, the end of which she plugs with a great quantity of 

 wood — little chunks of charcoal from the can biu-nings, bits 

 of reeds, tiny twigs and woodchips barricade her doorw^ay. 

 Therefore, for convenience sake, I will call her the lumberess. 



The modes of life of the two insects are in most respects 

 widely at variance. They build individual types of nests, 

 provision them differently, choose different situations for the 

 home site and go about their respective businesses in separate 



