364 The Htuiting IVasps 



other special labourers bleed it and skin it. 

 But, as the injury to the cervical marrow varies 

 a good deal in position and extent, it often 

 happens that the unfortunate beasts still retain 

 the motions of the heart and of the respiratory 

 organs ; and, in such cases, they suffer a re- 

 action under the knife ; they utter faint sounds 

 of pain and move their limbs, while already 

 half-flayed and disembowelled. Nothing could 

 be more painful than the sight of all those 

 animals skinned alive, cut up and transformed 

 by those men, covered with blood, who run 

 about in all directions.' 



The murderous methods of the saladeiro are 

 an exact repetition of what I had seen in the 

 slaughter-house. In both these lethal work- 

 shops they pierce the vertebral marrow at the 

 base of the skull. The Ammophila operates 

 in a similar fashion, with this difference, that 

 her surgery is much more complex, much more 

 difficult, because of the peculiar organization 

 of her victim. The honours are on her side 

 again when we consider the delicacy of the 

 result obtained. Her caterpillar is not a corpse, 

 like the Ox whose spinal cord is cut ; it is alive, 

 but incapable of movement. The insect here 

 is man's superior in all respects. 



Now how did the butcher of our parts and 



