The Hunting Wasps 



caterpillar is treated according to rule and 

 the Wasp's family is perpetuated; or else the 

 victim is only partially paralysed and the 

 Wasp's offspring dies in the egg. 



Yielding to the inexorable logic of things, 

 we will therefore admit that the first Hairy 

 Ammophila, after capturing a Grey Worm 

 to feed her larva, operated on the patient by 

 the exact method in use to-day. She seized 

 the creature by the skin of the neck, stabbed 

 it underneath, opposite each of the nerve- 

 centres and, if the monster threatened fur- 

 ther resistance, munched its brain. It must 

 have happened like this; for, once more, an 

 unskilled murderess, doing her work in a per- 

 functory and haphazard fashion, would leave 

 no successor, since the rearing of the egg 

 would become impossible. Save for the per- 

 fection of her surgical powers, the slayer of 

 fat caterpillars would die out in the first 

 generation. 



Again I hear you say : 



" The Hairy Ammophila, before hunting 

 the Grey Worm, may have picked out feebler 

 caterpillars and heaped up several in one 

 cell, until they represented the same bulk of 

 provender as the big prey of to-day. With 

 puny game, a few thrusts of the needle, per- 

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