THE INSECT MIND 



thing like superhuman knowledge. We have no 

 name for it but instinct, — untaught wisdom, — but 

 in some cases it is so far beyond anything that man 

 attains to, except after long research and experi- 

 mentation, that we marvel at it as we would at the 

 supernatural. The knowledge that the hunting 

 wasps possess that the spiders and crickets and 

 beetles which they bring and store up for their 

 young, as yet unhatched, must be paralyzed but 

 not killed, — their animal life, as Fabre calls it, 

 destroyed, but their vegetative life left intact, — 

 how far it transcends anything we know until we 

 call to our aid all the resources of experimental 

 science ! 



Fabre shows us one species of wasp striking un- 

 erringly at the one minute vulnerable point in the 

 breastplate of its prey, a species of beetle. It seems 

 to possess an anatomist's knowledge of the struc- 

 ture of its game, and of the physiological function 

 of its nerve ganglia. With one species of beetle it 

 knows that one thrust of the sting is sufficient; with 

 a species of cricket whose main nerve-centres are 

 three and are more widely distributed, it knows that 

 three stabs are required, and it knows precisely 

 where to administer them. How marvelous it all is ! 

 The divinity that so carefully fitted a coat of mail 

 to the beetle left one vulnerable point, and then 

 betrayed the secret to its deadly enemy, the wasp. 

 Fabre has seen the wasp seize the beetle, press 



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