More Hunting Wasps 



briefly state my results and the conditions 

 which must be fulfilled in order to run the 

 delicate refectory as it should be run. 



And, first, we must not dream of detaching 

 the egg from its natural prey to lay it on 

 another. The egg adheres pretty firmly, by 

 its cephalic pole, to the quarry. To remove 

 it from its place would inevitably jeopardize 

 its future. I therefore let the larva hatch 

 and acquire suflicient strength to bear the 

 removal without peril. For that matter, my 

 excavations most often provide me with my 

 subjects in the form of larvae. I adopt for 

 rearing-purposes the larvae that are a quar- 

 ter to a half developed. The others are 

 too young and risky to handle, or too old and 

 limited to a short period of artificial feeding. 



Secondly, I avoid bulky heads of game, 

 a single one of which would suflice for the 

 whole growing-stage. I have already said 

 and I here repeat how nice a matter it is to 

 consume a victim which has to keep fresh 

 for a couple of weeks and not to finish dying 

 until it is almost entirely devoured. Death 

 here leaves no corpse; when life is extinct, 

 the body has disappeared, leaving only a 

 shred of skin. Larvae with only one large 

 prey have a special art of eating, a danger- 

 ous art, in which a clumsy bite would prove 

 ?98 



