OCTOBER 275 



have to fight hard for it, for the venom of some spiders is 

 potent. In all cases it is for their young, not for them- 

 selves, that they go a-himting. 



A typical example of the way a digger wields its sting 

 is furnished by the wasp Scolia, as elucidated by the 

 French naturalist Fabre. Warned by the waning of 

 summer suns, the mother Scolia disappears underground, 

 and burrows till she finds a lusty grub of one of the 

 chafers, and stabs it with her sting. Then she deposits 

 an egg on the lower surface of her victim, whence in due 

 time will be hatched a hungry maggot which will proceed 

 to devour the grub. But note: if Madame Scolia were 

 to stab the grub to death, decomposition would render 

 the carcass uneatable before her offspring was hatched. 

 She knows better than to do that ; she plants her sting 

 delicately M. Fabre says upon an important nerve gang- 

 lion, so that the grub remains alive, but paralysed. So 

 soon as the maggot is hatched, it proceeds to eat its way 

 into the body of the chafer-grub ; but not at random. It 

 devours muscular tissue only, carefully avoiding the vital 

 organs, which it reserves as a bonne-bouche when the 

 grub's skin is empty of all else. Life is preserved in the 

 grub to the very last moment, and the food, therefore, 

 remains fresh, till the youthful Scolia, full-fed, turns 

 comfortably into a cocoon and awaits resurrection as a 

 perfect wasp. 



Such is one of innumerable tragedies that underlie our 

 flower-decked fields, so hard to explain as the outcome of 

 ' a fortuitous concourse of atoms.' The life-purpose of 

 Scolia appears, at first sight, unutterably cruel ; but it is 

 not so bad as it seems ; not one whit worse, in fact, than 

 one of our own slaughter-houses. It has been proved, by 



