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Updated: June 27, 2025
To get at the exact nature of the materials, instead of pulverizing the whole insect in a mortar, I use merely the muscular tissue obtained by scraping the inside of the dried Oryctes' corselet. Or else I extract the dry contents of the hind legs. I do the same with the desiccated corpses of the cockchafer, the Capricorn, or Cerambyx beetle, and the Cetonia, or rosechafer.
Without succeeding in my final aim, for reasons which I have just explained, I have seen the Two-banded Scolia feasting greedily on the grub of the Oryctes, which was substituted for that of the Cetonia, and putting up with an Ephippiger taken from the burrow of the Sphex; I have been present at the repast of three Hairy Ammophilae accepting with an excellent appetite the Cricket that replaced their caterpillar.
The vulnerable point is thus easily accessible to the sting, despite the creature's posture of defence, in which it contracts and coils up. In this cylinder I recognize eleven ganglia, one more than in the Cetonia. The first three, or thoracic, ganglia are plainly distinguishable from one another, although they are set very close together; the rest are all in contact.
I select from my heap of garden-mould, that inexhaustible mine, two larvae of the Rhinoceros Beetle, Oryctes nasicornis, about one-third full-grown, so that their size may not be out of proportion to the Scolia's. It is in fact almost identical with the size of the Cetonia. I paralyse one of them by giving an injection of ammonia in the nerve-centres.
"Do you know that the cetonia contains poison?" asked I. "What kind of poison?" was the inquiring response, given with great quickness. "The poison," I said, evasively, "that gives the motive to the Bánk-Bán tragedy." At these words Siegfried puffed a whole cloud of tobacco-smoke full in my face, and at any other time I should have strongly resented the insult; but this time he was right.
During these assaults, which were resumed as soon as they were repulsed, the aggressor repeatedly applied the tip of her belly to the larva, but without unsheathing, as I could see by the absence of the start which the larva gives when it feels the pain of the sting. The Scolia therefore does not prick the Cetonia anywhere until the weapon covers the requisite spot.
What are we to say of the Cetonia- and Anoxia-larvae, which are always attacked in the first thoracic segment, after long and painful struggles, when the assailant can sting the grub freely at whatever point she chooses, since it is quite naked and offers no greater resistance to the lancet at one point than at another?
This again is a loss which the Cetonia can suffer without dying then and there.
I was just crushing one under my foot, when the dark-haired girl near me cried out "Why do you kill that poor cetonia?" "Because it injures the roses," I said. "Well, let them alone! Who cares for the roses?" "Who cares for the roses?" Is not that strange? A young girl taking the side of the harmful destroyer against the innocent victim!
Had she to operate according to individual structure, she would need an anatomical dictionary; and instinct is essentially unfamiliar with generalities: its knowledge is always confined to limited points. The Cerceres know their Weevils and their Buprestis-beetles absolutely; the Sphex their Grasshoppers, their Crickets and their Locusts; the Scoliae their Cetonia- and Oryctes-grubs.
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