V ONE SKILFUL TO SLAY 69 



thing among vigorous Coleoptera moving their long 

 spurred legs for whole weeks ? It is absolutely- 

 necessary — and here we seem caught in a blind 

 alley — to obtain deathly immobility with the fresh- 

 ness of life for the interior organs. Before such an 

 alimentary problem the best instructed man of the 

 world would stand helpless — even the practised 

 entomologist would own himself at a loss. The 

 larder of the Cerceris would defy their reasoning 

 powers. 



Let us then imagine an academy of entomologists 

 and physiologists, a congress where the question 

 should be discussed by Flourens, Majendies, Claude 

 Bernards. To obtain at once complete immobility 

 and long preservation of food, the first and most 

 natural and simple idea would be that of preserved 

 meats. One would invoke some antiseptic liquid, 

 as the illustrious savant of the Landes did with 

 regard to his Buprestids, and attribute such virtue 

 to the poisonous fluid of the Cerceris, but this 

 strange quality has yet to be proved. Gratuitous 

 hypothesis replacing the unknown quantity of the 

 preserving liquid may perhaps be the final verdict of 

 the learned assembly, as it was that of the naturalist 

 of the Landes. 



Should one insist and explain that the larvae 

 require not preserved food which could never have 

 the properties of flesh still palpitating, but prey yet 

 alive, so to say, in spite of complete absence of 

 motion, the learned Congress, after ripe considera- 

 tion, will fall back upon paralysis : " Yes, of course ; 

 the creature has to be paralysed without being 

 killed." There is but one means of arriving at this 



