Advanced Theories 1 1 9 



but even mere likelihood, not in the act itself, 

 which I accept without reserve, but in the 

 motives for the act. Darwin saw what he tells 

 us ; only, he was mistaken as to the heroine of 

 the drama, the drama itself and its significance. 

 He was profoundly mistaken ; and I will 

 prove it. 



First of all, the old English scientist was 

 bound to know enough about the creatures to 

 which he gives these high dignities to call things 

 by their right names. Let us therefore take 

 the word Sphex in its strict scientific meaning. 

 Under this assumption, by what strange aberra- 

 tion was this English Sphex, if any such there 

 be, choosing a Fly for her prey, when her kins- 

 women hunt such different game, Orthoptera ? 

 Even admitting what I consider to be inad- 

 missible, a Fly to form the quarry of a Sphex, 

 other difficulties come crowding up. It is now 

 duly proved that the Burrowing Wasps do not 

 take dead bodies to their larvse, but a victim 

 merely numbed, paralysed. Then what is the 

 meaning of this prey of which the Sphex cuts 

 off the head, the abdomen, the wings ? The 

 stump carried away is no more than a fragment 

 of a corpse, which would infect the cell with 

 its rottenness, without being of any use to the 

 larva, whose hatching is not due for some days 

 yet. It is as clear as daylight : when making 



