A FAMILIAR GUEST 1 5 



wild rose, which should alone be sufficient to, ac- 

 count for all those victimized caterpillars. This 

 species is a regular dependent on the rose, dwelling 

 within its cocoon-like canopy of leaves, which are 

 drawn together with a few silken webs, and in 

 which it is commonly concealed by day. A little 

 persuasion upon either end of its leafy case, how- 

 ever, soon brings the little tenant to view as he 

 wriggles out, backward or forward, as the case 

 may be, and in a twinkling, spider-like, hangs sus- 

 pended by a web, which never fails him even in 

 the most sudden emergency. 



I can readily fancy the tiny hornet making a 

 commotion at one end of this leafy domicile and 

 the next instant catching the evicted caterpillar 

 " on a fly " at the other. Grasping her prey with 

 her legs and jaws, in another moment the wrig- 

 gling body is passive in her grasp, subdued by 

 the potent anaesthetic of her sting — a hypodermic 

 injection which instantly produces the semblance 

 of death in its insect victim, reducing all the vital 

 functions to the point of dissolution, and then 

 holds them suspended — literally prolongs life, it 

 would sometimes seem, even beyond its normal 

 duration — by a process which I might call ductile 

 equation. This chemical resource is common to 

 all the hornets, \yhether their victims be grass--. 



