92 The Hunting Wasps 



small and armed with weak mandibles that 

 would appear unequal to the part which they 

 have just played. Of these fourteen segments 

 the middle ones are supplied with stigmata, 

 or breathing-holes. Its livery consists of a 

 yellowish-white ground, studded with innumer- 

 able dots of a chalky white. 



We have seen the larva begin its second 

 Cricket with the belly, the juiciest and softest 

 part. Like a child, which first licks the jam 

 off its bread and then bites into the crumb 

 with a disdainful tooth, the larva makes straight 

 for the best part, the abdominal viscera, and 

 leaves until later the meat that has to be 

 patiently extracted from its horny sheath : a 

 task for a leisure hour, when it is comfortably 

 digesting the earlier meal. Nevertheless, the 

 grub, when quite young, when newly hatched, 

 is not so dainty : it goes for the bread first 

 and the jam afterwards. It has no choice : it 

 is obliged to bite its first mouthful right out of 

 the breast, at the spot where the mother fixed 

 the ^%g. The food here is a little harder, but 

 the place is safe, because of the profound 

 inertia into which the thorax has been plunged 

 by three thrusts of the dagger. Elsewhere 

 there would be, if not always, at least often, 

 spasmodic shudders which would dislodge the 

 feeble grub and expose it to terrible hazards 



