THE MINERS 283 



the abdomen against the ground and buz- 

 zing at the same moment. 



The Ammophila finds in paralysing her 

 caterpillars a more difficult problem than 

 faces those wasps that use the adult insect 

 as provision for their young. A well- 

 directed sting in the central nerve-ganglion 

 of an adult insect is enough to paralyse, 

 or even to kill it, but the caterpillar, being 

 a larva and composed of a number of 

 segments, each with its own nerve centre, 

 requires more heroic treatment, and this, 

 Ammophila well knows. She catches her 

 caterpillar and stings it, not once, but sev- 

 eral times, each time in or near a diflferent 

 nerve-centre. Her performance in poison- 

 ing her prey has been thus described by an 

 eye-witness, — 



"Standing high on her long legs and 

 disregarding the continued struggles of 

 her victim, she lifted it from the ground, 

 curved the end of her abdomen under its 

 body, and darted her sting between the 



