74 The Hunting Wasps 



those which I had so often obtained, the Sphex 

 got astride of the Cricket, seized him with her 

 mandibles by the antennae, and at once dragged 

 him into the burrow. Who was the fool now ? 

 Why, the experimenter foiled by the clever 

 Wasp ! At the other holes, her neighbours 

 likewise, one sooner, another later, discovered 

 my treachery and entered the dwelling with the 

 game, instead of persisting in abandoning it on 

 the threshold to seize it afterwards. What did 

 all this mean ? The colony which I was now 

 inspecting, descended from another stock — 

 for the children return to the site selected by 

 their parents — was cleverer than the colony of 

 the year before. Craft is handed down : there 

 are tribes that are sharper-witted and tribes 

 that are duller-witted, apparently according to 

 the faculties of their elders. With the Sphex 

 as with us, the intellect differs with the province. 

 Next day, in a different locality, I repeated 

 my experiment with another Cricket ; and 

 every time the Sphex was hoodwinked. I had 

 come upon a dense-minded tribe, a regular 

 village of Boeotians, as in my first observations. 



