VARIATION. 117 



the bee is well illustrated by the instincts 

 and habits of the Sphex of Languedoc. 1 



This race, resembling in appearance an 

 attenuated wasp, neither constructs combs 

 nor stores honey, but digs a hole in the 

 ground and nourishes its offspring on fresh 

 animal food, which the parent provides by 

 capturing and semi-paralysing an insect much 

 larger than itself, the Eppiphiger. Seizing 

 its victim, the Sphex darts its sting into 

 the thorax, where the poison reaches and 

 paralyses the nerve centres of locomotion. 

 The Eppiphiger, thus unable to offer any 

 effectual resistance, is dragged to the bottom 

 of a burrow hastily made by the Sphex, which 

 then deposits its egg on a particular spot on 

 the breast of the victim, closes the burrow, 

 and departs. The egg hatches in two or 

 three days, and the larva fattens on its semi- 

 paralysed but living food, thus kept fresh, 

 until, in ten or fourteen days, it is ready to 

 spin a cocoon a very complex structure in 

 which it passes the winter. 



Complex instincts, Darwin says, are the 

 results of the accumulation of numerous slight 

 beneficial differences, whilst others are ac- 

 quired habits, accumulated through many 

 generations. But feeding its young on 



1 See ' Insect Life, 3 by Fabre. 



