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Updated: May 1, 2025
In the three foregoing families, the females are almost always destitute of an efficient musical apparatus. But there are a few exceptions to this rule, for Dr. Gruber has shewn that both sexes of Ephippiger vitium are thus provided; though the organs differ in the male and female to a certain extent.
The offspring of the Languedocian Sphex religiously consume the Ephippiger, that family dish so dear to their ancestors and no less dear to their descendants; no innovation in the ancient usages can tempt them. Others are better suited by variety, for reasons connected with flavour or with facility of supply; but then the selection of the game is kept within fixed limits.
In both cases the new diet was accepted without hesitation, a proof that it suited the nurseling; but in a day or two putrescence supervened and the Scolia perished on the fetid morsel. The method of preserving the Ephippiger, so well known to the Sphex, was unknown to my boarder; in this was enough to convert a delicious food into poison.
To those who have not this curious Grasshopper handy, I recommend the Ephippiger of the Vines, who is much more widely distributed. His ventral surface, which also is of a creamy white, likewise owes its colour to a plastering of uric acid. In the Grasshopper family many other species of smaller size and requiring more delicate handling would give us the same results in varying degrees.
We will try once more, this time with a victim paralysed not by me, an unskilled operator, but by an adept whose ability ranks so high that it is beyond discussion. Chance favours me to perfection: yesterday, in a warm sheltered corner, at the foot of a sandy bank, I discovered three cells of the Languedocian Sphex, each with its Ephippiger and the recently laid egg.
Similarly the female Ephippiger helps us to identify the Languedocian Sphex: her relics, the cymbals and the long sabre, are the unmistakable sign of the cocoon to which they adhere.
Ephippiger vitium, stridulating organs of. Epicalia, sexual differences of colouring in the species of. Equus hemionus, winter change of. Erateina, coloration of. Ercolani, Prof., hermaphroditism in eels. Erect attitude of man. Eristalis, courting of.
My young scatterbrains find it hard to understand that the beast which was so precious two days ago is now of no value whatever. When, owing to the chances of my net, a renewed demand for the Ephippiger sets in, then they will bring me the Cricket, the despised Cricket. Such a trade could never hold out if now and again my speculators were not encouraged by some success.
Yes, I have proved it by experiment; but the proof calls for so much patience that it seemed to me to suffice when obtained once for each species. In such difficult conditions, with a poison of excessive strength, a single success is conclusive proof; the thing is possible so long as it occurs once. A female Ephippiger is stung at the median point, just a little in front of the fore-legs.
The Sphex, when sitting down to an Ephippiger, the food that has fallen to its lot, knows thoroughly how to consume it and how to preserve, to the very end, the glimmer of life which keeps it fresh; but, if it has to browse upon a Cetonia-grub, whose different structure would confuse its talents as a dissector, it would soon have nothing before it but a heap of putrescence.
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