The Eumenes 



were always due to clumsy accidents. The 

 Eumenes' cells are crammed with game : 

 there are ten caterpillars in the cell of 

 E. Amadei and fifteen in that of E. 

 pomiformis. These caterpillars, stabbed 

 no doubt, but stabbed in a fashion unknown 

 to me, are not entirely motionless. The 

 mandibles seize upon what is presented to 

 them, the body buckles and unbuckles, the 

 hinder half lashes out briskly when stirred 

 with the point of a needle. At what spot is 

 the egg laid amid that swarming mass, 

 where thirty mandibles can make a hole in 

 it, where a hundred and twenty pair- of legs 

 can tear it? When the victuals consist of 

 a single head of game, these perils do not 

 exist; and the egg is laid on the victim not 

 at hazard, but upon a judiciously chosen 

 spot. Thus, for instance, the Hairy Am- 

 mophila fixes hers, by one end, across the 

 Grey Worm, on the side of the first pro- 

 legged segment. The egg hangs over the 

 caterpillar's back, away from the legs, 

 whose proximity might be dangerous. The 

 worm, moreover, stung in the greater 

 number of its nerve-centres, lies on its side, 

 motionless and incapable of bodily contor- 

 tions or sudden jerks of its hinder segments. 

 If the mandibles try to snap, if the legs give 

 21 



