212 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



ning organs. There is more material to work with, and 

 the web is a little more substantial, but there is no real 

 change, or need for any. 



We shall take two or three instances from the veteran 

 entomologist, Fabre, whom Darwin called ' that inimitable 

 observer ', who has perhaps got nearer the intimate life 

 of insects than any one has done since the days of Reaumur. 

 Fabre sees Instinct in the insect world looming as a big, 

 underivable fact, which must be taken as given, which 

 cannot be explained in terms of anything else, either 

 intelligence or reflex action. 



Picture the ringed Calicurgus wasp, which first stings 

 its captured spider near the mouth, thereby paralysing 

 the poison claws, and then, safe from being bitten, drives 

 in its poisoned needle with perfect precision at the thinnest 

 part of the spider's cuticle between the fourth pair of legs. 



Looking in another direction, what can we say of the 

 mother of the Halictus bee family, who, after prolonged 

 maternal labours, becomes in her old age the portress of 

 the establishment, shutting the door with her bald head 

 when intrusive strangers appear, opening it, by drawing 

 aside, when any member of the household arrives on 

 the scene ? 



The solitary digger wasp, Ammophila, is wont to drag 

 caterpillars to the living larder which she accumulates 

 for her young. The victim must be made inert, but it 

 must not be killed. The Ammophila first and quickly 

 stings the caterpillar in the three nerve-centres of the 

 thorax ; she does the same less hurriedly for the abdomen ; 

 and then she squeezes in the head, producing a paralysis 

 which cannot be recovered from ! This ghastly but wonder- 

 ful manifestation of instinct requires no noviciate, it is 



