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The gros sou, the penny-piece, if you please, stimulates their zeal; but with misadventurous results! What I need to-day is Crickets. The band sallies forth and returns with not a single Cricket, but numbers of Ephippigers, for which I asked the day before yesterday and which I no longer need, my Languedocian Sphex being dead. General surprise at this sudden change of market.
What are we to think of the Sphex' Crickets and Ephippigers, stabbed three times on the side of the thorax, which is fairly well defended, whereas the abdomen, soft and bulky, into which the sting would sink like a needle into a pat of butter, is neglected?
The Scoliae of my experiments are not novices, far from it: they are the descendants of carvers that have practised their art since Scoliae first came into the world; nevertheless they all perish from the decomposition of the rations supplied, when I try to feed them on Ephippigers paralysed by the Sphex.
But this prosperous condition does not last long. About the fourth day, a little sooner in one case, a little later in another, the three Ephippigers become putrid and the Scoliae die at the same time. This result is eloquent.
Abundance is assured; painful and often fruitless searches are avoided; the larder is crammed without being subject to the accidents of time, place and climate. When Ephippigers run short, you fall back upon Crickets; when there are no Crickets, you capture Grasshoppers. But no, my beautiful Sphex-wasps, you were not such fools as that.
Have you had the curiosity to look through the pages in which I set forth the detailed results of my observations? You haven't, have you? Again, I thought as much. It is a pity. You would there find, in particular, the history of certain Ephippigers who, after being stung by the Sphex according to rule, were reared by myself by hand.
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