164 The Hunting JVasps 



squeezed between the mandibles but without 

 fatal contusions, gradually recover their activity 

 and put an end to the general torpor. Admit 

 that it is all alarmingly scientific. 



• • • • • 



Fortune has her entomological whims : you 

 run after her and catch no glimpse of her ; 

 you forget about her and behold, she comes 

 tapping at your door ! How vainly I watched 

 and waited, how many useless journeys I made 

 to see the Languedocian Sphex sacrifice her 

 Ephippigers ! Twenty years pass ; these pages 

 are in the printer's hands ; and, one day early 

 this month, on the 8th of August 1878, my son 

 Emile comes rushing into my study : 



' Quick ! ' he shouts. ' Come quick : there 's 

 a Sphex dragging her prey under the plane- 

 trees, outside the door of the yard ! ' 



Emile knew all about the business, from 

 what I had told him, to amuse him when we 

 used to sit up late, and better still from similar 

 incidents which he had witnessed in our life 

 out of doors. He is right. I run out and see 

 a magnificent Languedocian Sphex dragging a 

 paralysed Ephippiger by the antennae. She is 

 making for the hen-house close by and seems 

 anxious to scale the wall, with the object of 

 fixing her burrow under some tile on the roof ; 

 for, a few years ago, in the same place, I saw a 



