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Therefore, notwithstanding the fatal outcome of my three attempts, I remain persuaded that the unfamiliar method of rearing would have been perfectly successful had the Ephippigers not gone bad, that is, if the Scoliae had known how to eat them according to the rules.
The details would form tedious reading and be of very little advantage, as in this sort of study it is impossible to marshal one's facts with any regularity. I will, therefore, sum them up in a few examples. The prick goes straight down. The spot is the same as that pierced by the sting of the slayer of Crickets and Ephippigers.
In the other victims with flexible skins, Caterpillars, Crickets, Mantes, Ephippigers, I perceived at least some pulsations of the abdomen, a few feeble contortions under the stimulus of a needle.
Stunned by colliding with the walls of their glass or wire-gauze prison, they all perish within twenty-four hours. Swifter in their movements and apparently satisfied with their honeyed thistle-heads, the Spheges, huntresses of Crickets or Ephippigers, die as quickly of nostalgia. All I offer them leaves them indifferent.
For instance, I had seen the Ephippigers of the Languedocian Sphex continue the waving of their antennae and their paralytic shudders for forty days of artificial feeding by hand; and I used to wonder whether the more or less early death of the other victims was not due to lack of nourishment quite as much as to the operation which they had undergone.
Not knowing how to eat it according to rule, the larva will kill it; and by next day the victuals will have become so much toxic putrescence. I have already told how I found it impossible to rear the Two-banded Scolia on Oryctes-larvae, fastened down to deprive them of movement, or even on Ephippigers, paralysed by the Languedocian Sphex.
That is the whole secret. One more word, on which I shall enlarge in another chapter. I observe that the Scoliae to which I give Ephippigers paralysed by the Sphex keep in excellent condition, despite the change of diet, so long as the provisions retain their freshness. They languish when the game goes high; and they die when putridity supervenes.
This is the game I want, a corpulent prey, of a size suited to the Scolia and, what is more, in splendid condition, artistically paralysed according to rule by a master among masters. As usual, I install my three Ephippigers in a glass jar, on a bed of mould; I remove the egg of the Sphex and on each victim, after slightly incising the skin of the belly, I place a young Scolia-grub.
Thus do the Ammophilae go to work when dealing with their caterpillars and the Sphex-wasps when dealing with their Locusts, Ephippigers and Crickets. With the Scoliae we come once again to a soft prey, with a skin penetrable by the sting no matter where it be attacked. Will the tactics of the caterpillar-hunters, who stab and stab again, be repeated here?
It is impossible to explain the preservation of the victuals until finally consumed by supposing that the venom injected by the Wasp when she delivers her paralysing stings possesses antiseptic properties. The three Ephippigers were operated on by the Sphex. Able to keep fresh under the mandibles of the Sphex-larvae, why did they promptly go bad under the mandibles of the Scolia-larvae?
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