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The first, often renewed under glass during the greater part of August, has always refused my offers; the second, her contemporary, has, on the contrary, promptly accepted them. I present Jules' Ammophila with a slender, brownish Looper which I caught on the jasmine. The attack is not slow in coming.
The newly hatched boll worm walks like a geometrical larva or looper, a measuring worm as it was called.
Nowhere do we see repeated the care expended upon paralysing the thorax, still less the insistent attention to the first segment. On returning to her Looper after the entr'acte devoted to the joys of success, the Ammophila stabs so swiftly that, on one occasion, I saw her obliged to begin all over again. Lightly stung along its whole length, the victim still struggles.
This done, the Ammophila releases her victim and proceeds to stamp her tarsi, to polish her wings, to stretch herself. Again I observe the acrobatic postures, the forehead touching the ground, the hinder part of the body raised. This mimic triumph is the same as that of the huntress of the Grey Worm. Then the Looper is once more seized.
I am all the more inclined to accept these secondary manoeuvres, not as yet recorded the transports of triumph and the compressions of the neck inasmuch as I see them practised upon the Looper caterpillars, which differ so greatly from the others in external structure, exactly as I have described them in the case of the Grey Worm, which is of the ordinary form.
The non-armoured victims, vulnerable by the sting over almost their whole body, ordinary caterpillars and Looper caterpillars, Cetonia- and Anoxia-larvae, whose only means of defence, apart from their mandibles, consists of rollings and contortions, called for the testimony of another victim, the Spider, almost as ill-protected, but armed with formidable poison-fangs.
It will be seen how valuable is the evidence of Jules' Ammophila: it tells us that the immolaters of Looper caterpillars and those of ordinary caterpillars follow precisely the same method; that victims displaying very dissimilar external structure do not entail any modification of the operative tactics so long as the internal organization remains the same.
"Some one must have made it some day mustn't they?" They stared at him, as probably the animals stared at Adam, wondering what their splendid names were going to be. The yearning in their eyes was enough to make a rock produce sweet-scented thyme. Even the looper steadied its pin-point head to listen. But nothing happened. Uncle Felix looked dumber than the clock.
This one hunts the Locust and nothing else; that one the Mantis and the Empusa. Yet another is addicted to the Grey Worm and another to the Looper. Fools! How great was your mistake in allowing the wise eclecticism of your ancestress, whose relics now repose in the hard mud of some lacustrian stratum, to become obsolete! How much better would things be for you and yours!
But the feeble creature is very active: it tramps over the sides of the rich morsel, walks all round it. It covers the ground pretty quickly, buckling and unbuckling by turns, very much after the manner of the looper caterpillar. Its two extremities are its chief points of support.
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