Further than this few have followed the couple. But Professor C. V. Riley, our government entomologist, has unearthed the entire mystery, and eye-witnessed the fate of our cicada, and I am thus enabled to picture the rest of the tragedy. What now follows is very similar to what I described in a previous paper concerning the mud-wasp nest packed with its dead spiders. Our cicada is not dead—more's the pity. The thrust of the sting has only paralyzed the insect, in order that the young of the hornet may be provided with living food. From the opening of the tunnel in the sand our harvest-fly was lugged a distance of about six inches, when the tunnel branched in various directions. Down a branch for about eight inches more, and his journey terminated in a dungeon, where his career was doomed to end. Doubtless each of the other branches held one or two similar prisoners, for the cicada is the favorite prey of this particular wasp. Once arrived at the dungeon, the hornet deposits an egg upon its victim, and leaves him in its charge. In a few days it hatches into a larva with such a voracious appetite that within a week it has devoured the contents of the cicada's shell and reached its full growth. It now incloses itself within a silky cocoon, and after abiding the winter emerges at the brim in the spring a full-fledged hornet, with its mouth watering at the thought of cicadas.

What a strange wonder-working medicine is this which the hornet carries in its laboratory! In the guise of death it yet prolongs life indefinitely. The ordinary existence of the cicada, for instance, is but a few weeks at most, and yet it is claimed by Mr. Riley that if for any reason the egg of the wasp should fail to hatch, the paralyzed cicada will remain in its condition of suspended animation for a year, and presumably longer.

Here is a suggestion for the materia medica which may open up immortal fame to the chemist of the future. What is this mysterious essence which the wasp carries in its poniard? As Professor Riley suggestively remarks, "If man could do what these wasps have done from time immemorial, viz., preserve for an indefinite period the animals they feed on by the simple insertion of some toxic fluid in the tissues, he would be able to revolutionize the present methods of shipping cattle and sheep, and obviate much of the cruelty which now attends the transportation of live-stock and much of the expense involved in cold storage."

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