[2] ·88 oz. av.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[3] For a description of this species, which is new to entomology, see the Appendix.—Author’s Note. [↑]
Chapter iii
A SCIENTIFIC SLAUGHTERER
The wasp has told us part of her secret by showing us the spot which her sting touches. Does this solve the question? Not yet, nor by a long way. Let us go back for a moment, forget what the insect has just taught us and, in our turn, set ourselves the problem of the Cerceris. The problem is this: to store underground, in a cell, a big enough pile of game to feed the larva which will be hatched from the egg laid on the heap.
At first sight this victualling seems simple enough; but a little reflection shows that it is attended by very grave difficulties. Our own game, for instance, is brought down by a shot from a gun; it is killed with horrible wounds. The Wasp has refinements of taste unknown to us: she must have the prey intact, with all its elegance of form and colouring, no broken limbs, no gaping wounds, no hideous disembowelling. Her victim has all the freshness of the live insect; it retains, without the loss of [[41]]a single speck, that fine tinted bloom which is destroyed by the mere contact of our fingers. If the insect were dead, if it were really a corpse, how great would be our difficulty in obtaining a like result! Each of us can kill an insect by brutally crushing it under foot; but to kill it neatly, with no sign of injury, is not an easy operation, is not an operation which any one can perform. How many would be utterly perplexed if they were called upon to kill, then and there, without crushing it, a hardy little insect which, even when you cut off its head, goes on struggling for a long time after! One has to be a practical entomologist to think of the various ways of asphyxiation; and even here success would be doubtful with primitive methods, such as the fumes of benzine or burning sulphur. In this unwholesome atmosphere the insect flounders about too long and loses its glory. We must have recourse to more heroic measures, such as the terrible exhalations of prussic acid emanating slowly from strips of paper steeped in cyanide of potassium, or else and better still, as being free from danger to the insect-hunter, the all-powerful fumes of bisulphide of carbon. It is quite an art, you see—and an art which has to call to its aid the formidable arsenal of chemistry—to kill an insect neatly, to do what the [[42]]Cerceris performs so quickly and so prettily, that is, if we are stupid enough to assume that her captured prey actually becomes a corpse.
A corpse! But that is by no means the fare prescribed for the larvæ, those little ogres clamouring for fresh meat, whom game ever so slightly high would inspire with insurmountable disgust. They want meat killed that day, with no suspicion of taint, the first sign of corruption. Nevertheless, the prey cannot be packed into the cell alive, as we pack the cattle destined to furnish fresh meat for the passengers and crew of a ship. What indeed would become of the delicate egg laid among live provisions? What would become of the feeble larva, a tiny grub which the least touch would bruise, among lusty Beetles who would go on kicking for weeks with their long, spurred legs? We need here two things which seem utterly irreconcilable: the immobility of death combined with the sweet wholesomeness of life. Before such a dietetic problem the most deeply read layman would stand powerless; the practical entomologist himself would own himself beaten. The Cerceris’ larder would defy their reasoning power.
Let us then suppose an academy of anatomists and physiologists; let us imagine a congress at which the question is raised among such men as [[43]]Flourens,[1] Magendie[2] and Claude Bernard.[3] If we want to obtain both complete immobility of the victim and also its preservation during a long period without going bad, the simplest and most natural idea which comes to us is that of tinned foods. Our congress would suggest the use of some preserving liquid, just as the famous Landes scientist did when he was confronted with his Buprestes; they would attribute exquisite antiseptic virtues to the Wasp’s poison-fluid; but these strange virtues would still remain to be proved. And perhaps the conclusion of that learned assembly, like the conclusion of the sage of the Landes, would be a purely gratuitous supposition which would simply substitute one unknown quantity for another, giving us in the place of the mystery of those uncorrupted tissues the mystery of that wonderful preserving fluid.
If we insist, if we point out that the larvæ need, not preserved food, which could never [[44]]possess the properties of still palpitating flesh, but something that shall be just as if it were live prey, despite its complete inertia, the learned congress, after due reflection, will fix on paralysis: