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Updated: May 31, 2025
Bolder still, the wasp has taken possession of the dwelling house. On my door sill, in a soil of rubbish, nestles the white-banded Sphex: when I go indoors, I must be careful not to damage her burrows, not to tread upon the miner absorbed in her work. It is quite a quarter of a century since I last saw the saucy cricket hunter.
Without succeeding in my final aim, for reasons which I have just explained, I have seen the Two-banded Scolia feasting greedily on the grub of the Oryctes, which was substituted for that of the Cetonia, and putting up with an Ephippiger taken from the burrow of the Sphex; I have been present at the repast of three Hairy Ammophilae accepting with an excellent appetite the Cricket that replaced their caterpillar.
At the moment when the Sphex was buried in the earth examining the chamber, Fabre withdrew the prey a short distance and awaited events. Having made the domiciliary visit, the Sphex then went straight to the place where it had left its insect, but could not find it.
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.
Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before it began to live consciously on its own account?
This freestone-factory causes me no astonishment: when the manufacturer undergoes his change, it serves for various chemical works. Certain Oil-beetles, such as the Sitaris, locate in it the urate of ammonia, the refuse of the transformed organism; the Sphex, the Pelopæi, the Scoliæ, use it to manufacture the shellac wherewith the silk of the cocoon is varnished.
What better, for example, than the term Sphex? The ear is satisfied and the mind is not corrupted by a prejudice, a source of error to the beginner. I have not nearly as much liking for Ammophila, which represents as a lover of the sands an animal whose establishments call for compact soil.
How could I suspect that an entomologist of Lacordaire's standing should be capable of such a blunder as to substitute a Sphex for a Common Wasp? Great was my perplexity, in the face of this evidence! A Sphex capturing a Fly was an impossibility; and I blamed the British scientist accordingly. But what insect was it that Erasmus Darwin saw?
A slight displacement, caused by the effort of the insects' backs, is all that can possibly be effected. Ammophila and Cerceris, Sphex and Pompilus excavate their burrows wherever they please; they carry their prey on the wing, or, if too heavy, drag it afoot. The Necrophorus knows no such facilities in his task.
Like the Yellow-winged Sphex, whom I have teased so often during her cellaring-operations, she is a narrow conservative, learning nothing and forgetting nothing. Let us leave her to do her work in peace. The Locust disappears underground and the egg is laid upon the breast of the paralysed insect. That is all: one carcase for each cell, no more.
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