648 Reflexes, Instincts, and Intelligence 



while it struggles is done in a moment. After some fluttering of the wings, 

 which unfold like carmine or azure fans, some moving of feet up and down, 

 the victim becomes motionless. Next it must be got home by the Sphex on 

 foot. She performs this toilsome operation as do her kindred, dragging her 

 game between her feet, and holding one of the antennae in her mandibles. 

 If a grass thicket has to be traversed, she hops and flutters from blade to 

 blade, keeping firm hold of her prey. When within a few feet of her dwell- 

 ing, she executes the same manoeuvre as does S. occitanica, but without 

 attaching the same importance to it, for sometimes she neglects it. The 

 game is left on the road, and though no apparent danger threatens the dwell- 

 ing, she hurries toward its mouth, and puts in her head repeatedly, or even 

 partly enters, then returns to the Acridian, brings it nearer, and again leaves 

 it to revisit her burrow, and so on several times, always with eager haste. 



"These repeated visits have sometimes annoying results. The victim, 

 rashly abandoned on a slope, rolls to the bottom, and when the Sphex returns 

 and does not find it where she left it, she must hunt for it, sometimes in vain. 

 If found, there will be a difficult climb, which, however, does not prevent 

 her leaving it once more on the perilous slope. The first of these repeated 

 visits to her cell is easily explained. Before bringing her heavy load she is 

 anxious to make sure that the entrance is clear, and that nothing will hinder 

 her carrying in the prey. But what is the use of her other visits, repeated so 

 speedily one after another? Are the Sphex's ideas so unstable that she for- 

 gets the one just made, and hurries back a moment later, only to forget that 

 she has done so, and so on? It would indeed be a slippery memory where 

 impressions vanished as soon as made. Let us leave this too obscure ques- 

 tion. 



"At length the game is brought to the edge of the well, its antennae hang- 

 ing into the mouth, and there is an exact repetition of the method used by 

 S. flavipennis and, though in less striking conditions, by S. occitanica. She 

 enters alone, reappears at the entrance, seizes the antennae, and drags in 

 the Acridian. While she was within I have pushed the prey rather farther 

 off, and have always obtained precisely the same result as in the case of the 

 huntress of crickets. In both Sphegidae there was the same persistence in 

 plunging into their burrows before dragging down their prey. We must 

 recollect that S. flavipennis does not always allow herself to be duped by 

 my trick or withdrawing the insect. There are elect tribes among them, 

 strong-minded families, who after a while find out the tricks of the experi- 

 menter, and know how to baffle them. But these revolutionaries capable of 

 progress are the few; the rest, rigid conservatives in manner and customs, 

 are the majority, the crowd. I cannot say whether the hunters of Acrididae 

 show more or less cunning in different districts. 



"But the most remarkable thing, and the one to which I want specially 



