The Great Cerceris 



for traces of irritability of the organs in the 

 three Weevils dispatched before my eyes: 

 those traces were never revealed, whether I 

 pinched or pricked the insect; and it required 

 the artificial means described above to pro- 

 voke them. Thus, these powerful Cleoni, 

 which, if pierced alive with a pin and fixed 

 on the insect-collector's fatal sheet of cork, 

 would have kicked and struggled for days and 

 weeks, nay, for whole months on end, 

 instantly lose all power of movement from 

 the effect of a tiny prick which inoculates 

 them with an invisible drop of venom. But 

 chemistry has no poison so potent in so minute 

 a dose; prussic acid would* hardly produce 

 those effects, if indeed it can produce them at 

 all. It is not to toxology then, surely, but to 

 physiology and anatomy that we must turn to 

 grasp the cause of this instantaneous an- 

 nihilation; and to understand these marvel- 

 lous happenings we must consider not so much 

 the intense strength of the poison injected as 

 the importance of the organ injured. 



What is there then at the point where the 

 sting enters? 



