224: THE SOLITARY WASPS. 



nothing in such a refined operation that has the slightest utility 

 for them. Should the wasps themselves be permitted to ask a 

 -question at this point they would .probably inquire why we 

 should imagine that they need to preserve the prey for "sev- 

 eral weeks," when their larvae hatch and begin to devour it in 

 from one to three days? 



The assumption that the larvae must be nourished upon fresh 

 food is the central point from which all these wonderful infer- 

 ences are drawn. Strangely enough, in all these speculations a 

 very important fact has been overlooked the fact, now fully 

 established, that the larvae are able to subsist on prey that has 

 been killed outright, and that where they are nourished upon a 

 single insect or spider, the food, although it must begin to de- 

 compose within a few days, still serves its purpose through the 

 whole period of alimentation. Clearly then, the purpose of 

 the stinging is not to paralyze and preserve the prey alive, since 

 the wasp has no reason for attempting any such difficult pro- 

 cedure, the larva thriving quite as well upon dead as upon living 

 food. 



Much of the mystery that surrounds the stinging operation 

 depends upon the supposition that the wasps are enabled by 

 some power that serves them in lieu of anatomical knowledge, 

 to sting the center of some particular ganglion without the var- 

 iation of a hair's breadth to the right or left. 



"All," says Fabre, "from first to last shows us .as clear as a 

 drop of water that the external structure of the victim goes for 

 nothing in the method used. It is the internal anatomy that 

 determines it. The points touched are not the most penetrable ; 

 they fulfill a major condition beside which penetrability is un- 

 important. This condition is nothing less than the immediate 

 neighborhood of the nervous center the influence of which must 

 be abolished. Body to body with its prey, soft or hard, the dep- 

 redator comports itself as if it knew the locality of the appara- 

 tus of innervation better than any one of us." Writing of an- 

 other wasp (Scolia) he says that she "wishes her prey inert but 

 alive; she does not want a cadaver which would soon be poison to 



