French National Institute. 18? 



terpiilar is not injured by the wasp so much as to kill it, and 

 thus make it liable to petrifaction : it then roll? it up into a 

 circularform, and places it at the bottom of the hole: llie wasp 

 thep proceeds to fetch eleven similar caterpillars sijcccssively, 

 .which it treats in the same manner-, it then closes up the 

 hole and dies. The small worm is now hatched ; it devours 

 the twelve caterpillars in succession, and then metamorphoses 

 itself into a wasp, which leaves its subterraneous apartment 

 and flics about among the flowers ; it becomes impregnated 

 by the male, and begins again, when it wishes to lay its 

 eggs, precisely the same operations as its molher, and upon 

 the same species of caterpillars. 



M. Dupont de Nemours is not only obliged to suppose, 

 aud in fact he does suppose in his explanation, that the per- 

 fect insect preserves the remernbrance of sensations expe- 

 rienced by it in the state of a woriHj although it lias .entirely 

 thacicjcd its form and its organs; but he must also think, 

 although he docs not say so expressly, that the wasp can 

 never know by eye-sight the caterpillars and the sand, tliat 

 it had never learnt to know them except by the touch, and 

 jeven by its old touch as a worm ; for wiien a worm it is 

 blind, it lives in a dark cell, and when ihe v.-asp is hatch^ 

 ;n this cell the caterpillars a^e no longer there. Lastly, as 

 M. Dupont docs not venture to admit that the wasp has the 

 foresight that the egg it deposits will become a worm, and 

 will require all the care it can bestow on it, he must intend 

 lo insinuate that the wasp does all this solely to auuisc itself 

 by imitating what it had feen in its infancy. 



Such, in our opinion, are the difficulties which M. Du- 

 pont combats on the one hand, and such arc the difficulties 

 into which he plunges himseif on the other hand. We have 

 endeavoured to be impartial in cur statement of them, but 

 it does not belong to us to form any judgment as to their 

 merits. Our readers who peruse M. Dupont's memoir will 

 derive all the pleasure which the wit and imagination of this 

 ingenious philosopher cannot fail lo produce. 



KKIX, In- 



