The Hairy Ammophila has twice allowed me to attend her surgical operations. I have described in an earlier chapter of this volume my first observation, which dates many years back. On that occasion I witnessed the performance quite unexpectedly; to-day, I have made all my preparations and have plenty of time at my disposal, so that I am able to make a much more thorough observation. In each case there was a multiplicity of needle-pricks, which were distributed methodically, from front to back, along the ventral surface. Is the number of stings indeed identical in both cases? This time, it is exactly nine. In the case of the victim which I saw paralysed on the Plateau des Angles, it seemed to me that the weapon inflicted more wounds, though I am not able to state the precise number. It is quite possible that this number varies slightly and that the last segments of the caterpillar, being much less important than the others, are attacked or left alone according to the size and strength of the quarry to be incapacitated.
On the second occasion, moreover, I had my first view of the squeezing process to which the caterpillar’s brain is subjected, a process that produces the torpor which makes the transport and storage of the victim possible. So remarkable a fact would not have escaped [[358]]me in the first instance; it did not, therefore, take place. It follows that this cerebral compression is a resource which the Wasp has at her disposal, for use when circumstances demand it, as for instance when the victim seems likely to offer resistance on the road.
The malaxation of the cervical ganglia is optional: it has no bearing on the future of the larva; the Wasp practises it, when needful, to facilitate transport. I have seen the Languedocian Sphex, who gave me so much trouble in the old days, at work fairly often, but only once has she performed this operation on the neck of her Ephippiger in my presence. The invariable and absolutely necessary part of the Hairy Ammophila’s procedure seems therefore to be the multiplicity of stings and their distribution one by one over all or nearly all the nerve-centres along the median line of the lower surface.
Let us place side by side with the murderous art of the Wasp the murderous art of man, practical man, whose business it is to slay rapidly. I will here recall one of my childhood’s memories. We were schoolboys of twelve years old, or thereabouts. We were being instructed in the woes of Melibœus, pouring out his sorrows on the bosom of Tityrus, who offers him his chestnuts, [[359]]his sour milk and his bed of fresh bracken;[1] we were made to recite a poem by Racine the Younger,[2] La Religion. A curious poem, forsooth, for children who cared more for marbles than theology! I remember just two lines and a half:
… et, jusque dans la fange,
L’insecte nous appelle et, certain de son prix,
Ose nous demander raison de nos mépris.[3]
Why do these two lines and a half linger in my memory and none of all the rest? Because already Scarabæus and I were friends. Those two lines and a half bothered me: I thought it a very absurd idea to relegate you to the mire, ye insects so seemly clad, so elegantly groomed. I knew the bronze harness of the Carabus, the Russia-leather jerkin of the Stag-beetle; I knew that the least of you possesses an ebon sheen and gleams of precious metals; and therefore the mire wherein the poet flung you shocked me somewhat. If M. Racine Junior had nothing [[360]]better to say about you, he might as well have held his tongue; but he did not know you, and in his day there were only just a few who were beginning to have a dim conception of your nature.
While going over some passage of the tiresome poem for the next day’s lesson, I would indulge my fancy for another kind of education. I visited the Linnet in her nest, on a juniper-bush standing as high as myself; I watched the Jay picking an acorn on the ground; I came upon the Crayfish, still quite soft after shedding his shell; I made inquiries as to the exact date when the Cockchafers were due; I went in quest of the first full-blown Cuckoo-flower. Plants and animals, that wondrous poem of which a faint echo was beginning to wake in my young brain, made a very pleasant change from the uninspiring alexandrine. The problem of life and that other one, with its dark terrors, the problem of death, at times passed through my mind. It was a fleeting obsession, soon forgotten by the mercurial spirits of youth. Nevertheless, the tremendous question would recur, brought to mind by this incident or that.
Passing one day by a slaughter-house, I saw an Ox driven in by the butcher. I have always had an insurmountable horror of blood; when [[361]]I was a boy, the sight of an open wound affected me so much that I would fall into a swoon, which on more than one occasion nearly cost me my life. How did I screw up courage to set foot in those shambles? No doubt, the dread problem of death urged me on. At any rate, I entered, close on the heels of the Ox.