Preface 



bestow on each of them a hurried epithet, in 

 the manner of old Homer. Shall I mention, 

 for instance, the Leucospis, a parasite of the 

 Mason-bee, who, to slay his brothers and 

 sisters in their cradle, arms himself with a 

 horn helmet and a barbed breastplate, which 

 he doffs immediately after the extermination, 

 the safeguard of a hideous right of primo- 

 geniture? Shall I tell of the marvellous 

 anatomical knowledge of the Tachytes, of 

 the Cerceris, of the Ammophila, of the Lan- 

 guedocian Sphex, who, according as they 

 wish to paralyze or to kill their prey or their 

 adversary, know exactly, without ever blunder- 

 ing, which nerve-centre to strike with their 

 sting or their mandibles? Shall I speak of 

 the art of the Eumenes, who transforms her 

 stronghold into a complete museum adorned 

 with shells and grains of translucent quartz; 

 of the magnificent metamorphosis of the 

 Pachytilus cinarescens; of the musical in- 

 strument owned by the Cricket, whose bow 

 numbers one hundred and fifty triangular 

 prisms that set In motion simultaneously the 

 four dulcimers of the elytron? Shall I sing 

 the fairy-like birth of the nymphs of the 

 Anthophagus, a transparent monster, with a 

 17 



