172 The Hunting IVasps 



One remark more. Fresh food is absolutely 

 necessary for the Wasp's larvae. If the prey 

 -were warehoused in the burrow intact, in four 

 or five days it would be a corpse abandoned to 

 corruption ; and the scarce-hatched grub would 

 find nothing to live upon but a putrid mass. 

 Pricked with the sting, however, it can keep 

 ahve for two or three weeks, a period more than 

 long enough to allow the ^g'g to hatch and the 

 larva to grow. The paralysing of the victim 

 therefore has a twofold result : first, the living 

 dish remains motionless and the safety of the 

 delicate grub is not endangered ; secondly, the 

 meat keeps good a long time and thus ensures 

 wholesome food for the larva. Man's logic, 

 enlightened by science, could discover nothing 

 better. 



My two other Ephippigers stung by the 

 Sphex were kept in the dark with food. To 

 feed inert insects, hardly differing from corpses 

 except by the perpetual waving of their long 

 antennae, seems at first an impossibility ; still, 

 the play of the mouth-parts gave me some hope 

 and I tried. My success exceeded my anticipa- 

 tions. There was no question here, of course, 

 of giving them a lettuce-leaf or any other piece 

 of green stuff on which they might have browsed 

 in their normal state ; they were feeble vale- 

 tudinarians, who needed spoon-feeding, so to 



