PARALYZED PROVENDER 47 



and abandoned as helpless living flesh for the young wasp to gorge 

 upon, 



In order to understand what has just taken place, let us examine 

 the victim's anatomy and structure. In outward form spiders are 

 divided into two distinct parts the cephalothorax and the abdo- 

 men. We are concerned chiefly with the former, which is the first 

 division of the creature, the head and thorax, as it were, combined 

 in one. The central nervous system of the spider is, for the most 

 part concentrated in a mass of ganglions clustered about the oesoph- 

 agus. The oesophagus is a tube through which food passes from 

 the mouth to the stomach. It lies in the central portion of the 

 cephalothorax. That part of the central system lying above is the 

 brain, from which the optic nerves and those of the biting and 

 poisoning appendages arise. Lying below the oesophagus is the 

 ganglion from which the nerves of the legs and palpi emerge. 



Now, strange as it may seem, the wasp knows the above paragraph 

 by heart. She was an anatomist long before man. She understood 

 spiders long before man understood himself. Her teacher was in- 

 stinct, an immortal master. Thus in stinging her spider she is like 

 the master surgeon. With a single tiny wound above, with a single 

 lance below, she accomplishes the desired end. Into the spider's 

 nervous center instinct guides the wasp's poisoned dart. With 

 precise strokes she reaches the ganglions of her victim and spills 

 . her venom. Henceforth no external outrage, however great, may be 

 transmitted to the brain; no volition in return will command the 

 forces of protest and defense. Like a party on a broken wire, the 

 spider lies helpless with the central office paralyzed! 



In preparing provender for the cells, the methods employed by the 

 majority of solitary wasps are more or less the same. Yet the sting- 

 poisons of different species produce two widely different effects on 

 the victims. Both are doubtless forms o-f the same affliction; one, 



