More Hunting Wasps 



the most arduous expeditions? The Dog 

 again is omnivorous and therefore a cosmo- 

 politan. 



The discovery of a new dish, said Brillat- 

 Savarin, is of greater importance to human- 

 ity than the discovery of a new planet. The 

 aphorism is nearer to the truth than it ap- 

 pears to be in its humorous form. Certainly 

 the man who was the first to think of crush- 

 ing wheat, kneading flour and cooking the 

 paste between two hot stones was more de- 

 serving than the discoverer of the two-hun- 

 dredth asteroid. The invention of the po- 

 tato is certainly as valuable as that of Nep- 

 tune, glorious as the latter was. All that 

 increases our alimentary resources is a dis- 

 covery of the first merit. And what is true 

 of man cannot be other than true of animals. 

 The world belongs to the stomach which is 

 independent of specialities. This truth is of 

 the kind that has only to be stated to be 

 proved. 



Let us now return to our insects. If I am 

 to believe the evolutionists, the various game- 

 hunting Wasps are descended from a small 

 number of types, which are themselves de- 

 rived, by an incalculable number of concate- 

 nations, from a few amoebae, a few monera 

 and lastly from the first clot of protoplasm 

 208 



