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At ten o'clock in the morning, when the heat begins to grow intolerable to the observer, there is a continual coming and going between the burrows and the tufts of grass, everlasting, thyme and wormwood, which constitute the Tachytes' hunting-grounds within a moderate radius. The journey is so short that the Wasp brings her game home on the wing, usually in a single flight.
I confine myself to calling her the Mantis-killing Tachytes and leave to the specialists the task of adorning her with a Latin name, if it be really the fact that the Wasp is not yet catalogued. I will be brief in my delineation. To my thinking the best description is this: mantis-hunter. With this information it is impossible to mistake the insect, in my district of course.
Like the Mantis-killing Tachytes, she hunts the various Mantides of the countryside, consisting mainly of the Praying Mantis; only her large size requires them to be more fully developed, without however having attained the form and the dimensions of the adult. She places three to five of them in each cell.
Perched high upon the shanks of its four hind-legs, with its abdomen curled, its thorax raised erect, its front-legs, the traps and implements of warfare, folded against its chest, it sways limply from side to side, on the tip of the bough. Any one seeing it for the first time in its grotesque pose will give a start of surprise. The Tachytes knows no such alarm.
Though so slight a creature as the male Philanthus finds a ration of two Bees sufficient for his needs, the female, twice or thrice as bulky, will consume three to six at least. If the male Tachytes requires three Mantes, his consort's meal will demand a batch of something like ten.
At the nesting-season, all this tiny world of huntresses is filled with astounding activity. The quality of a speedy worker being common to all, none can boast of it to the exclusion of the rest. Had I had a vote when the Tachytes was christened, I should have suggested a short, harmonious, well-sounding name, meaning nothing else than the thing meant.
The mist that surrounded us at the outset is dispelled. This is indeed a Meloid, a true Meloid, one of the strangest anomalies among the parasites of its tribe. Instead of living on the honey of a Bee, it feeds on the skewerful of Mantes provided by a Tachytes.
It has been adorned with a learned name, derived from the Greek Tachytes, meaning rapidity, suddenness, speed. The creature's godfather, as we see, had a smattering of Greek; its denomination is none the less unfortunate: intended to instruct us by means of a characteristic feature, the name leads us astray. Why is speed mentioned in this connection?
Its subterranean excursions cannot cover a wide range, but they enable it to visit a few adjacent cells. I have mentioned how greatly the Tachytes' provision of Mantes varies. The smaller rations certainly fall to the males, which are puny dwarfs compared with their companions; the more plentiful fall to the females.
Only I warn them that the insects sticking to the plant do not dissolve into broth, but shrivel, quite uselessly, in the sun. Let us return to the Tachytes, who is also a victim of the vegetable snare. With a sudden flight, a huntress arrives, carrying her drooping prey. She grazes the Silene's lime-twigs too closely. Behold the Mantis caught by the abdomen.
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