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If we can prolong the duration, we shall have the victim of the Sphex. But first let us look into the effect of a prick administered elsewhere than opposite the thoracic ganglia. I cause a female Ephippiger to be stung in the abdomen, about the middle of the lower surface.
For some remarks on the action of the Sphex, and for Darwin's opinion on the matter, see Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 299-303. The sureness of instinct. It is not doubtful that a sure inherited instinct conducts the Sphex to prick its victim in the situation of the nervous ganglia, which will be wounded in the act.
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.
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 Sphex plunges her dagger three times into the breast of the cricket, because she knows, by an intuition that we cannot comprehend, that the locomotor innervation of the cricket is actuated by three nervous centres, which lie wide apart.
Had she to operate according to individual structure, she would need an anatomical dictionary; and instinct is essentially unfamiliar with generalities: its knowledge is always confined to limited points. The Cerceres know their Weevils and their Buprestis-beetles absolutely; the Sphex their Grasshoppers, their Crickets and their Locusts; the Scoliae their Cetonia- and Oryctes-grubs.
A. White's paper in the "Annals of Nat. Hist.," vol. vii. p. 472. Lieut. Hutton has described a sphex with similar habits in India, in the "Journal of the Asiatic Society," vol. i. p. 555. He adds that the wasp, in order to find the road, every now and then made "demi-tours d'environ trois palmes." Azara's Voyage, vol. i. p. 213
Those of you who are versed in the knowledge attaching to this problem, investigate, I beg you, search, sift, see if you can discover the reason why the victuals keep fresh when consumed by a Sphex, whereas they promptly become putrid when consumed by a Scolia. For me, I see only one reason; and I very much doubt whether any one can suggest another.
If in our days you are each confined to a standing family-dish, it is because your ancestress of the lacustrian schists never taught you variety. Could she have taught you uniformity? Let us suppose that the Sphex of antiquity, a novice in the gastronomic art, prepared her potted meats with a single kind of game, no matter what.
My skin, which is no less sensitive than another's, pays no attention to it: I handle Sphex, Ammophilae and Scoliae without heeding their lancet-pricks. I have said this before; I remind the reader of it because of the matter in hand.
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