The Hunting Wasps 



numerous. Though she left her prey easily 

 visible, the Wasp appears to foresee the dif- 

 ficulty of finding it again when the moment 

 comes to drag it home. At least, if the 

 search is unduly prolonged, you see her sud- 

 denly interrupt her exploration of the ground 

 and return to her caterpillar, which she feels 

 and nibbles at for a moment, as though to 

 make sure that it is really her own game, her 

 property. Then she hurries back again to 

 the field of search, which she leaves a second 

 time, if need be, and a third, in order to 

 inspect the prey. I am not at all sure that 

 these repeated visits of the Wasp to the 

 caterpillar are not a means of refreshing her 

 memory of the place where she left it. 



This is what happens in exceedingly com- 

 plicated cases; but as a rule the Wasp goes 

 back quite easily to the well dug the day 

 before on the spot to which chance has taken 

 her. The vagabond's guide is her topo- 

 graphical memory, whose marvellous feats 

 I shall have to tell later. As for me, in 

 order to return next day to the well hidden 

 under the lid of the little flat stone, I dared 

 not trust to my unaided memory: I needed 

 notes, sketches, lines of latitude and longi- 

 258 



