A Scientific Slattghterer 55 



story will shortly occupy our attention, stacks 

 her lairs with young Crickets first pricked with 

 her poisoned lancet. I have extracted from 

 one of those lairs three poor Crickets whose 

 extreme limpness would, in any other circum- 

 stances, have denoted death. But here again 

 death was only apparent. Placed in a flask, 

 these Crickets kept in very good condition, 

 perfectly motionless all the time, for nearly 

 three weeks. In the end, two went mouldy, 

 and the third partly revived, that is to say, he 

 recovered the power of motion in his antennae, 

 in his mouth-parts and, what is more remark- 

 able, in his first two pair of legs. If the Wasp's 

 skill sometimes fails to benumb the victim 

 permanently, one can hardly expect invariable 

 success from man's rough experiments. 



In the Beetles of the second class, that is 

 to say, those whose thoracic ganglia are some 

 distance apart, the effect of the ammonia is 

 quite different. The least vulnerable are the 

 Ground-beetles. A puncture which would have 

 produced instant annihilation of movement in 

 a large Sacred Beetle produces nothing but 

 violent and disordered convulsions in the 

 medium-sized Ground-beetles, be they Chlaenius, 

 Nebria or Calathus. Little by little the insect 

 quiets down and, after a few hours' rest, its 

 usual movements are resumed as though it had 



