Some additional observations modified this too absolute view. Next year I visit the same spot at the proper season. The new generation has inherited the burrowing-site selected by the previous generation; it has also faithfully inherited its tactics: the experiment of withdrawing the Cricket yields the same results. Such as last year’s Sphex-wasps were, such are those of the present year, equally persistent in a fruitless procedure. The illusion was simply growing worse, when good fortune brought me into the presence of another colony of Sphex-wasps, in a district at some distance from the first. I recommenced my attempts. After two or three experiments with results similar to [[74]]those which I had so often obtained, the Sphex got astride of the Cricket, seized him with her mandibles by the antennæ, and at once dragged him into the burrow. Who was the fool now? Why, the experimenter foiled by the clever Wasp! At the other holes, her neighbours likewise, one sooner, another later, discovered my treachery and entered the dwelling with the game, instead of persisting in abandoning it on the threshold to seize it afterwards. What did all this mean? The colony which I was now inspecting, descended from another stock—for the children return to the site selected by their parents—was cleverer than the colony of the year before. Craft is handed down: there are tribes that are sharper-witted and tribes that are duller-witted, apparently according to the faculties of their elders. With the Sphex as with us, the intellect differs with the province.
Next day, in a different locality, I repeated my experiment with another Cricket; and every time the Sphex was hoodwinked. I had come upon a dense-minded tribe, a regular village of Bœotians, as in my first observations. [[75]]
Chapter v
THE THREE DAGGER-THRUSTS
There is no doubt that the Sphex displays her most cunning resources at the moment of immolating a Cricket; it is important, therefore, to ascertain the manner wherein the victim is sacrificed. Profiting by the repeated attempts which I had made when I was studying the tactics of the Cerceres, I at once applied to the Sphex the method which had succeeded with the other Wasps, a method that consisted in taking the prey from the huntress and forthwith replacing it by another, living prey. The substitution is all the easier inasmuch as we have seen the Sphex herself releasing her victim in order to go down the burrow for a moment alone. Her daring familiarity, which makes her come and take from your fingers and even out of your hand the Cricket whom you have stolen from her and now offer her again, also lends itself admirably to the successful issue of the experiment, by allowing you to observe every detail of the drama closely. [[76]]
Again, to find live Crickets is an easy matter: we have but to lift the first stone that we see and we find them crouching underneath, sheltered from the sun. These Crickets are young ones, of the same year, who as yet boast but rudimentary wings and who, not possessing the industry of the full-grown insect, have not learnt to dig those cavernous retreats where they would be safe from the Sphex’ investigations. In a few moments I have as many live Crickets as I could wish for. This completes my preparations. I climb to the top of my observatory, establish myself on the level ground, in the centre of the Sphex village, and wait.
A huntress appears upon the scene, carts her Cricket to the entrance of the home and goes down her burrow by herself. I quickly remove the Cricket and substitute one of mine, placing him, however, some distance away from the hole. The kidnapper returns, looks round, and runs and seizes the victim, which is too far off for her. I am all eyes, all attention. Nothing would induce me to give up my part in the tragic spectacle which I am about to witness. The terrified Cricket takes to flight, hopping as fast as he can; the Sphex pursues him hot-foot, reaches him, rushes upon him. There follows, amid the dust, a confused encounter, wherein each champion, now victor, now vanquished, by [[77]]turns is at the top or at the bottom. Success, for a moment undecided, at last crowns the aggressor’s efforts. Despite his vigorous kicks, despite the snaps of his pincer-like mandibles, the Cricket is laid low and stretched upon his back.
The murderess soon makes her arrangements. She places herself belly to belly with her adversary, but in the opposite direction, grasps one of the threads at the tip of the Cricket’s abdomen with her mandibles and masters with her fore-legs the convulsive efforts of his thick hinder thighs. At the same time, her middle-legs hug the heaving sides of the beaten insect; and her hind-legs, pressing like two levers on the front of the head, force the joint of the neck to open wide. The Sphex then curves her abdomen vertically, so as to offer only an unattackable convex surface to the Cricket’s mandibles; and we see, not without emotion, its poisoned lancet drive once into the victim’s neck, next into the joint of the front two segments of the thorax, and lastly towards the abdomen. In less time than it takes to relate, the murder is consummated; and the Sphex, after adjusting the disorder of her toilet, makes ready to haul home the victim, whose limbs are still quivering in the throes of death.
Let us consider for a moment the excellence [[78]]of the tactics of which I have given a feeble glimpse. The Cerceris attacks a passive adversary, incapable of flight, almost devoid of offensive weapons, whose sole chances of safety lie in a stout cuirass, the weak point of which, however, is known to the murderess. But what a difference here! The quarry is armed with dreadful mandibles, capable of disembowelling the assailant if they succeed in seizing her; it sports a pair of powerful legs, regular clubs bristling with a double row of sharp spikes, which can be used either to enable the Cricket to hop out of his enemy’s reach, or to send her sprawling with brutal kicks. Observe, therefore, the precautions which the Sphex takes before setting her sting in motion. The victim, turned upon his back, cannot, for lack of any purchase, use his hind-levers to escape with, which he certainly would do if he were attacked in the normal position, as are the big Weevils of the Great Cerceris. His spurred legs, mastered by the Sphex’ fore-feet, cannot act as offensive weapons either; and his mandibles, kept at a distance by the Wasp’s hind-legs, open in wide menace without being able to seize a thing. But it is not enough for the Sphex to render her Cricket incapable of hurting her; she must also hold him so firmly pinioned that he cannot make the slightest [[79]]movement capable of diverting the sting from the points at which the poison is to be injected; and it is probably with the object of stilling the movements of the abdomen that one of its terminal threads is grasped. No, if a fertile imagination had allowed itself free scope to invent a plan of attack at will, it could not have contrived anything better; and it is open to doubt whether the athletes of the classic palestræ, when grappling with an adversary, boasted more scientific attitudes.