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Updated: May 12, 2025
The Cetonia-larva, as served up to the young Scolia by its mother, is profoundly paralysed. Its inertia is complete and so striking that it constitutes one of the leading features of this narrative. But we will not anticipate. For the moment, the thing is to substitute for this inert larva a similar larva, but one not paralysed, one very much alive.
There is a perfect harmony between the operation and the patient's anatomy. The single stroke of the Scolia is no less wonderful than the repeated strokes of the Ammophila. Each has her appointed game and each slays it by a method as rational as any that our own science could invent.
Her rarity in my part of the country is probably the only cause that has hitherto prevented the realization of my wishes. I have just shown that the Two-banded Scolia feeds in infancy on Cetonia-larvae and particularly on those of C. aurata, C. morio and C. floricola.
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.
I do not say no. I declare moreover, that, to provoke lightning paralysis, the poison, if it is not deposited inside the mass of nervous substance, must act from somewhere very near. This assertion is merely echoing what the Two-banded Scolia has just shown us: her Cetonia-grub, stung less than a millimetre from the regular spot, did not become motionless until next day.
With Anacreon ceased the species of lyric poetry in which he excelled; indeed, he stands alone in it, and the tender softness of his song was soon drowned by the louder tones of the choral poetry. The Scolia were a kind of lyric songs sung at social meals, when the spirit was raised by wine and conversation to a lyrical pitch.
The Garden Scolia attacks Oryctes nasicornis; the Two-banded Scolia the Cetonia; the Interrupted Scolia the Anoxia. All three operate below ground, under the most unfavourable conditions; and all three have for their victim a larva of one of the Scarabaeidae, which, thanks to the exceptional arrangement of its nerve-centres, lends itself, alone of all larvae, to the Wasp's successful enterprises.
Apart from a few details, which are of no importance here, we may repeat this sketch of the Anoxia-grub and we shall have, if the size be at least quadrupled, a picture of the larva of Oryctes nasicornis, the monstrous prey of the Garden Scolia. Its general appearance is the same: there is the same exaggeration of the belly; the same hook-like curve; the same incapacity for standing on its legs.
I found a few cocoons, nearly all broken, like the one which I already possessed, and, like it, bearing on their side the tattered skin of a larva of the same Scarabaeid. Two of these cocoons which are still intact contained a dead adult Wasp. This was actually the Two-banded Scolia, a precious discovery which changed my suspicions into a certainty.
If this point of attack is ill-chosen, the nurseling runs the risk of presently finding under its mandibles some essential organ, which should have been respected until the end in order to keep the victuals fresh. Remember how difficult it is to complete the rearing when the tiny larva is moved from the place chosen by the mother. The game promptly becomes putrid and the Scolia dies.
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