The Hunting Wasps 



We have here therefore a wholly local para- 

 lysis, a paralysis of the legs, or rather a par- 

 tial abolition and ataxy of their movements. 

 Can this very incomplete inertia be caused by 

 some special arrangement of the victim's 

 nervous system, or does it come from this, 

 that the Wasp perhaps administers only a 

 single prick, instead of stinging each ganglion 

 of the thorax, as the Cricket-huntress does? 

 I cannot tell. 



Still, for all its shivering, its convulsions, 

 its disconnected movements, the victim is 

 none the less incapable of hurting the larva 

 that is meant to devour it. I have taken 

 from the burrow of the Sphex Ephippigers 

 struggling just as lustily as when they were 

 first half-paralysed; and nevertheless the 

 feeble grub, hatched but a few hours since, 

 was digging its teeth into the gigantic victim 

 in all security; the dwarf was biting into the 

 colossus without danger to itself. This strik- 

 ing result is due to the spot selected by the 

 mother for laying her egg. I have already 

 said how the Yellow-winged Sphex glues her 

 egg to the Cricket's breast, a little to one 

 side, between the first and second pair of 

 legs. Exactly the same place is chosen by 

 the White-edged Sphex; and a similar place, 

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