90 The Hunting Wasps 



laid, is attacked, as I have said, near the point 

 where the huntress administered her second 

 sting, that is to say, between the first and 

 second pair of legs. In a few days the young 

 larva has dug in the victim's breast a hollow 

 large enough to admit half its body. It is not 

 uncommon to see the Cricket, bitten to the 

 quick, uselessly waving his antennae and his 

 abdominal threads, opening and closing his 

 mandibles on space and even moving a leg. 

 But the enemy is safe and is ransacking his en- 

 trails with impunity. What an awful night- 

 mare for the paralysed Cricket ! 



The first ration is finished in six or seven 

 days' time ; none of it remains but the frame- 

 work of skin, with all its parts more or less in 

 position. The larva, whose length is now 

 twelve millimetres,^ leaves the Cricket's body 

 through the hole in the thorax which it made 

 to start with. During this operation it moults ; 

 and its cast skin often remains caught in the 

 opening through which it made its exit. It 

 rests after the moulting and then attacks a 

 second ration. Being stronger now, the larva 

 has nothing to fear from the feeble movements 

 of the Cricket, whose daily-increasing torpor 

 has had time to extinguish the last glimmers 

 of resisting-power during the week and more 



• Nearly half an inch. — Translator's Note. 



