The Hunting Wasps 



insect in swaddling-bands, motionlessly awaits 

 the awakening which will not take place for 

 another month to come. The legs, the 

 antennae, the exposed mouth-parts and the 

 wing-stumps have the appearance of clearest 

 crystal and lie evenly spread under the thorax 

 and the abdomen. The rest of the body is 

 an opaque white, very faintly smeared with 

 yellow. The middle four segments of the 

 abdomen carry a narrow and blunt extension 

 on either side. The last segment, termina- 

 ting above in a blade-like expansion shaped 

 like the sector of a circle, is equipped below 

 with two conical protuberances set side by 

 side: this makes in all eleven appendages 

 studding the outline of the abdomen. Such 

 is the delicate creature which, to become a 

 Sphex, must don a motley livery of black and 

 red and throw off the fine skin in which it is 

 closely swathed. 



I was curious to follow from day to day 

 the appearance and the progress of the 

 nymph's colouring and to test whether the 

 light of the sun, that rich palette whence na- 

 ture derives her colours, could influence that 

 progress. With this object, I took pupae 

 from their cocoons and put them in glass 

 tubes, of which some, kept in complete dart 

 106 



