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These include the Languedocian Sphex, with her Ephippiger, and the Hairy Ammophila, with her Grey Worm. There is none of this sudden constriction, dividing the creature into two disparate halves, when the victuals consist of numerous and comparatively small items. The larva then retains its usual shape, being obliged to pass, at brief intervals, from one joint in its larder to the next.
There is a perfect harmony between the operation and the patient's anatomy. The single stroke of the Scolia is no less wonderful than the repeated strokes of the Ammophila. Each has her appointed game and each slays it by a method as rational as any that our own science could invent.
Mandans, correlation of colour and texture of hair in the. Mandible, left, enlarged in the male of Taphroderes distortus. Mandibles, use of the, in Ammophila; large, of Corydalis cornutus; large, of male Lucanus elaphus. Mandrill, number of caudal vertebrae in the; colours of the male.
But, because instinct is, like intelligence, fallible, because it also shows individual deviations, it does not at all follow that the instinct of the Ammophila has been acquired, as has been claimed, by tentative intelligent experiments.
No, for in some Bembex-burrows we shall find Sphaerophoriae, those slender, thong-like creatures, and Bombylii, looking like velvet pincushions; no again, for in the pits of the Silky Ammophila we shall see, side by side, the caterpillar of the ordinary shape and the Measuring-worm, a living pair of compasses which progresses by alternately opening out and closing; no, once more, for in the storerooms of Stizus ruficornis and the Mantis-hunting Tachytes we see stacked beside the Mantis the Empusa, her unrecognizable caricature.
The Ammophila, with the static paradox afforded by her mandibles; the Empusa, with her claws unwearied by ten months' hanging, leave the physiologist perplexed and make him wonder what really constitutes rest. In absolute fact, there is no rest, apart from that which puts an end to life. The struggle never ceases; some muscle is always toiling, some nerve straining.
If the caterpillar's jaws open and threaten, the Ammophila stills them by biting the neck; if they are already growing quiescent, she refrains. Without being indispensable, this operation is useful at the moment of carting the prey. The caterpillar, too heavy to be carried on the wing, is dragged, head first, between the Ammophila's legs.
While waiting for the truth to be revealed and my suspicions set aside, I will complete the little that I know of her by noting that the Black Tachytes passes the winter in the adult form and away from her cell. She hibernates, like the Hairy Ammophila.
Replete to the regulation point, it spins its cocoon. What will emerge from this? If the reader expects to see any modifications, caused by a diet which the species, left to itself, had never effected, let him be undeceived and that quickly. The Ammophila fed on Spiders is precisely the same as the Ammophila fed on caterpillars, just as man fed on rice is the same as man fed on wheat.
The antennae are what we always fall back upon when the insect's actions are not quite clear to us; we gladly put down to them whatever is most necessary to our arguments. For that matter, I had plenty of fairly good reasons for suspecting them of containing the sense of direction. For other varieties of the Ammophila, cf. "Insect Life": chapter 15.
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