The Hunting Wasps 



portrait. Black here, rusty red there, smoky 

 brown at the tips of the wings; black velvet 

 in this part, silvery down in that, a smooth 

 surface in a third. It is all very definite and 

 minute: we must do this much justice to the 

 precision and patience of the narrator; but it 

 is very long and also it is by no means always 

 clear, so much so that we may be excused if we 

 are not quite able to follow it, even when we 

 are not altogether new to the business. But 

 add to the tedious description merely this: 

 " Hunts Ephippigers; " and these two words 

 at once shed light: there is no possibility of 

 my now mistaking my Sphex, for she alone 

 possesses the monopoly of that particular 

 prey. To give this illuminating note, what 

 would be needed? The habit of really ob- 

 serving and of not making entomology con- 

 sist of so many series of impaled insects. 



But let us pass on and examine the little 

 that is known about the hunting-methods of 

 the foreign Sphex-wasps. I open Lepeletier 

 de Saint-Fargeau's l Natural History of 



*Amtdtt Comte Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau (1769- 

 circa 1850), author of an Histoire naturelle des insectes 

 (1836-1846) and of the volume on insects in the Ency- 

 clopidie mtthodique. He was a younger brother of 

 Louis Michel and Felix Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, the 

 members of the Convention. Translator's Note. 



118 



