‘I can’t find one, sir.’
‘Bother! Then come to the rescue, you others! Claire, Aglaé, all of you! Hurry up, hunt and find!’
The whole family is brought into requisition. All its members display an activity worthy of the serious events at hand. I myself, chained to my post lest I should lose sight of the Ammophila, keep one eye upon the huntress and with the other watch for Grey Worms. Nothing turns up: three hours pass and not one of us has found the caterpillar.
The Ammophila does not find it either. I see her hunting with some persistency in spots where the earth is slightly cracked. The insect wears itself out in clearing operations; with a mighty effort it removes lumps of dry earth the size of an apricot-stone. Those spots are soon [[335]]abandoned, however. Then a suspicion comes to me: the fact that there are four or five of us vainly hunting for a Grey Worm does not prove that the Ammophila is troubled with the same want of skill. Where man is helpless, the insect often triumphs. The exquisite delicacy of perception that guides it cannot leave it at a loss for hours together. Perhaps the Grey Worm, foreseeing the gathering storm, has dug its way lower down. The huntress very well knows where it lies, but cannot extract it from its deep hiding-place. When she abandons a spot after a few attempts, it is not for want of sagacity, but for want of the requisite power of digging. Wherever the Ammophila scratches, there must a Grey Worm be: the place is abandoned because the work of extraction is admittedly beyond her strength. It was very stupid of me not to have thought of it earlier. Would such an experienced poacher pay any attention to a place where there is really nothing? What nonsense!
I thereupon resolve to come to her assistance. The insect, at this moment, is digging a tilled and absolutely bare spot. It leaves the place, as it has already done with so many others. I myself continue the work, with the blade of a knife. I do not find anything either; and I retire. The insect comes back and again begins [[336]]to scratch at a certain part of my excavations. I understand:
‘Get out of that, you clumsy fellow!’ the Hymenopteron seems to say. ‘I’ll show you where the thing lives!’
Upon her indications I dig at the required spot and unearth a Grey Worm. Well done, my canny Ammophila! Did I not say that you would never have raked at an empty burrow?
Henceforth, it is like a hunt for truffles, which the Dog points out and the man extracts. I continue on the same system, the Ammophila showing me the place and I digging with the knife. I thus obtain a second Grey Worm, followed by a third and a fourth. The exhumation is always effected at bare spots that have been turned by the pitchfork a few months earlier. There is absolutely nothing to denote the presence of the caterpillar from without. Well, Favier, Claire, Aglaé and the rest of you, what have you to say? In three hours you have not been able to dig me up a single Grey Worm, whereas this clever huntress supplies me with as many as I want, once that I have thought of coming to her assistance!
I have now plenty of spare pieces; let us leave the huntress her fifth prize, which she unearths with my help. I will set forth in numbered paragraphs the various acts of the [[337]]gorgeous drama that passes before my eyes. The observation is made under the most favourable conditions: I am lying on the ground, close to the slaughterer, and not one detail escapes me.
1. The Ammophila seizes the caterpillar by the back of the neck with the curved pincers of her mandibles. The Grey Worm struggles violently, rolling and unrolling its contorted body. The Wasp remains quite unconcerned: she stands aside and thus avoids the shocks. Her sting strikes the joint between the first segment and the head, on the median ventral line, at a spot where the skin is more delicate. The dart stays in the wound with some persistency. This, it appears, is the essential blow, which will master the Grey Worm and make it more easy to handle.