More Hunting Wasps 



dealing with their Locusts, Ephipplgers and 

 Crickets. 



With the Scoliae we come once again to a 

 soft prey, with a skin penetrable by the sting 

 no matter where it be attacked. Will the 

 tactics of the caterpillar-hunters, who stab 

 and stab again, be repeated here? No, for 

 the difficulty of movement under ground 

 prohibits so complicated an operation. Only 

 the tactics of the paralysers of armour-clad 

 insects are practicable now, for, since there 

 is but one thrust of the dagger, the feat of 

 surgery is reduced to its simplest terms, a 

 necessary consequence of the difficulties of an 

 underground operation. The Scoliae, then, 

 whose destiny it is to hunt and paralyse un- 

 der the soil the victuals for their family, re- 

 quire a prey made highly vulnerable by the 

 close assemblage of the nerve-centres, as are 

 the Weevils and Buprestes of the Cerceres; 

 and this is why it has fallen to their lot to 

 share among them the larvae of the Scara- 

 bseidae. 



Before they obtained their allotted por- 

 tion, so closely restricted and so judiciously 

 selected; before they discovered the precise 

 and almost mathematical point at which the 

 sting must enter to produce a sudden and a 

 lasting immobility; before they learnt how 

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