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Updated: May 12, 2025
Perhaps one of them will be found to give chase to the terrible enemy of my crops, the voracious White Worm, the grub of the Cockchafer; perhaps the Hemorrhoidal Scolia, rivalling in size the Garden Scolia and like her, no doubt, requiring a copious diet, will be entered in the insects' "Who's Who" as the destroyer of the Pine-chafer, that magnificent Beetle, flecked with white upon a black or brown ground, who of an evening, during the summer solstice, browses on the foliage of the fir-trees.
And the prentice Scolia, who used at first to sting under the throat, had the skill, at her first attempt, to begin by disarming her adversary and then to go quite low down, almost to the end of the thorax, to strike the vital point. I am utterly incredulous as to her success. I see her eaten up if her lancet swerves and hits the wrong spot.
Considering the good condition of its silken fabric, this cocoon may have belonged to the Scolia who has just quitted her underground dwelling before my eyes. As for the skin accompanying it, this has been so much spoilt by the moisture of the soil and by the grassy roots that I cannot determine its origin exactly.
This is the stroke of the Philanthus, who kills her Bee by stinging her from below, under the chin. The Scolia needed a motionless but not dead victim, one that would supply fresh victuals; she will now have only a corpse, which will soon go bad and poison the larva. With a slant towards the thorax, the sting wounds the little mass of nerve-cells in the thorax.
Coiled upon itself, with an energy which my fingers have some difficulty in overcoming, the larva, I thought, would defy the Scolia, powerless to unroll it and disdaining any point but the one selected. I hoped and believed that it possessed this means of defence, a means both efficacious and extremely simple. I had presumed too much upon its ingenuity.
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.
The Interrupted Scolia experiences the same hunting and surgical difficulties when she attacks, in the crumbling, sandy soil, the larvae of the Shaggy Anoxia or of the Morning Anoxia, according to the district; and these difficulties, if they are to be overcome, demand in the victim a concentrated nervous system, like the Cetonia's.
This is the regulation stroke, the one which will induce paralysis and leave the small amount of life needed to keep the provisions fresh. A millimetre higher kills; a millimetre lower paralyses. On this tiny deviation the salvation of the Scolia race depends.
What ought the powerful Cetonia-grub to do to defy the Two-banded Scolia, who is far less vigorous than her victim? It should imitate the Anoxia-larva and remain rolled up like a Hedgehog until the enemy retires. It tries to escape, unrolls itself and is lost. The other does not stir from its posture of defence and resists successfully. Is this due to acquired caution?
The custom not of sitting as formerly on benches, but of reclining on sofas, at table; the postponement of the chief meal from noon to between two and three o'clock in the afternoon according to our mode of reckoning; the institution of masters of the revels at banquets, who were appointed from among the guests present, generally by throwing the dice, and who then prescribed to the company what, how, and when they should drink; the table-chants sung in succession by the guests, which, however, in Rome were not -scolia-, but lays in praise of ancestors all these were not primitive customs in Rome, but were borrowed from the Greeks at a very early period, for in Cato's time these usages were already common and had in fact partly fallen into disuse again.
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