The Hunting Wasps 



Acridians? The force of circumstances com- 

 pels me to put the question without finding a 

 reply. 



This is the place to interpolate a certain 

 passage from Lacordaire's * Introduction to 

 Entomology against which I am eager to 

 protest. Here it is: 



" Darwin, 2 who wrote a book on purpose 

 to prove the identity of the intellectual prin- 



1 Jean Theodore Lacordaire (1801-1870), professor at 

 the university of Liege from 1835, author of Les Genera 

 des coleopteres, in twelve volumes, and of the Introduc- 

 tion a I'entomologie quoted above (1837-39). Trans- 

 lator's Note. 



2 rasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the poet and natural- 

 ist, grandfather of Charles Robert Darwin. The book 

 from which the above passage is quoted is Zoonomia, 

 or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796) ; but the 

 reader will note that the author withdraws these com- 

 ments in a later essay (cf. The Mason-bees, by J. Henri 

 Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: 

 chap, vii.), where he explains that they are due to a 

 misquotation or mistranslation made by Lacordaire, who 

 wrote " a Sphex " where Darwin, as his grandson 

 pointed out to Fabre, had written " a Wasp," meaning 

 the Common or Social Wasp. It was open to me to 

 suppress this part of the chapter; but, in that case, there 

 would have been so little left of the original and so 

 small an excuse for the title that I might as readily have 

 suppressed the whole chapter, a liberty which I did not 

 feel justified in taking. Besides, the footnote to the 

 aforementioned chapter of The Mason-bees, which pre- 

 cedes the present volume in the English edition, makes 

 sufficient amends for any injury done to the elder Dar. 

 win's reputation here. Translator's Note^ 



126 



