124 INSECT LIFE ix 



and hindered its progress. Thereupon it lit again 

 on the walk, cut off first one wing and then the 

 other from the fly, and having thus removed the 

 cause of its difficulties, flew off with the remainder 

 of its prey. This fact indicates manifest signs of 

 reasoning. Instinct might have induced the Sphex 

 to cut off the wings of its victim before transporting 

 it to the nest, as do some species of the same 

 genus, but here were consecutive ideas and results 

 of those ideas quite inexplicable, unless one admits 

 the intervention of reason." 



This little story, which so lightly bestows reason 

 on an insect, is wanting not only in truth but in 

 mere probability — not in the act itself, which I do 

 not question at all, but in its motives. Darwin saw 

 what he relates, but he was mistaken as to the hero 

 of the drama ; as to the drama itself, and as to its 

 meaning — profoundly mistaken, and I can prove it. 



First and foremost the old English savant ought 

 to have known enough about the creatures which he 

 so freely ennobles to call things by their right name. 

 Let us therefore take the word Sphex in its strictly 

 scientific sense. Then by what strange aberration 

 does this English Sphex, if English ones there are, 

 choose a fly as its prey when its fellows hunt such 

 different game — namely, Orthoptera ? And even if we 

 grant, what I consider inadmissible, a Sphex catch- 

 ing flies, other difficulties crowd in. It is now 

 proved on evidence that the burrowing Hymenoptera 

 do not carry dead bodies to their larvae, but merely 

 prey benumbed and paralysed. What, then, is the 

 meaning of this prey whose head, abdomen, and 

 wings are cut off? The torso carried away is but a 



