Part 3

However, something more than logical reasoning was required to sweep away received opinions. I therefore opened hundreds of balls rolled by the dung beetles and others out of holes dug under my eyes, and never, never did I find either a central niche or an egg in the pellets. They are invariably rough heaps of food, hastily shaped, with no particular structure inside them, merely provender with which the beetles shut themselves up to enjoy an orgy in peace for some days. They covet and steal them with an energy which they certainly would not show if it implied new family cares. It would be absurd for one Scarabæus to steal the eggs of another, each having enough to do in securing the future of its own. So on that point no more doubt can exist; the balls rolled by beetles never contain eggs.

My first attempt to resolve the thorny question as to the bringing up of the larva was by constructing an ample enclosure with an artificial soil of sand and soil constantly renewed. Some twenty Scarabæus sacer were introduced, together with Copris, Gymnopleurus, and Onthophagus, and never did entomological experiment cost me so many mortifications. The main difficulty was to renew the food. My landlord owned a stable and a horse. I gained the confidence of his servant, who first laughed at my plans, and then allowed himself to be gained over by a silver coin. Every breakfast for my beetles cost twopence halfpenny; never before did the budget of a scavenger beetle amount to such a sum, I can still see and shall always see Joseph, as, when after grooming his horse of a morning, he would raise his head a little above the wall between the two gardens and call “Heigh! heigh!” on which I would hurry to receive a pot of manure. Discretion on both sides was necessary, as will be seen. One day his master appeared at the moment of transfer, and made up his mind that all his manure went over the wall, and that what he wanted for his cabbages went to grow my verbenas and narcissus. Vainly did I try to explain; my explanations seemed to him mere jests. Joseph got a sound scolding, was called this and that, and threatened with dismissal if it happened again. It did not.

I still had the resource of going bashfully along the road with a twist of paper to gather up stealthily provisions for my pupils. I did so, and do not blush for it. Sometimes fate was kind. A donkey carrying the produce of the market-gardens of Château-Renard and Barbentane to Avignon would depose an offering as he passed my door. Such a gift, instantly collected, enriched me for several days. In short, by hook or by crook, by watching for a dropping, or turning diplomatist to get one, I succeeded in feeding my captives. If success is earned by an experiment conducted with a fervour that nothing can discourage, my experiment deserved to prosper. It did not. After some time my Scarabæi, consumed by home-sickness in a space which deprived them of their wider movements, let themselves die miserably without revealing their secret. Gymnopleurus and Onthophagus responded better to my expectations. In due time I shall use the information furnished by them.

Along with my attempts at education in an enclosed space, I carried on direct researches, the results of which were far from what I desired. I felt that I must have assistants. Just then a joyous band of children were crossing the high land. It was a Thursday, and oblivious of school and hated lessons, an apple in one hand and a piece of bread in the other, they were coming from the neighbouring village of Les Angles and wending their way to search on the bare hill where the bullets drop when the garrison is shooting at a mark. A few bits of lead, worth about a halfpenny, were the object of this early morning expedition.

The tiny rosy flowers of wild geranium enamelled the turf which for a brief moment beautified this Arabia Petrea; the water wagtail, half black, half white, uttered its scornful cry as it fluttered from one point of rock to another; on the threshold of burrows, dug at the foot of tufts of thyme, the field-crickets filled the air with their monotonous symphony. And the children were happy in this festival of spring—happier still at their prospective riches—that halfpenny which they would get in return for the bullets they would find, that halfpenny which would enable them next Sunday to buy at the stall set up before the church two peppermint bull’s-eyes—two great bull’s-eyes at a farthing apiece!

I accosted the tallest, whose wide-awake air gave me hopes of him; the little ones formed a circle, each munching his apple; I explained the matter and showed them Scarabæus sacer rolling his ball, and told them that in a like ball, buried somewhere, I knew not where, a hollow is sometimes found, and in this hollow a grub. The thing to be done was to search about and watch the beetles in order to find such a ball. Those with no maggot would not count. To stimulate the children by a fabulous sum which would henceforward secure to me the time hitherto devoted to some farthing’s worth of lead, I promised a franc, a lovely new coin worth twenty halfpennies, for each inhabited ball. At the mention of this sum eyes opened wide with delightful naïveté. I had quite upset their ideas on the subject of money by naming this exorbitant price as the value of a piece of dirt. Then, to show I was in good earnest, I distributed some halfpence to clinch the bargain. The following week at the same day and hour I was to appear at the same place and faithfully perform the conditions of our compact towards all who should have made the precious discovery. Having thoroughly posted up all the party, I dismissed the children. “He really means it!” they said as they went away; “he really means it! If we could only get one apiece!” and with hearts swelling with sweet hope, they clinked their pence in the hollow of the hand. The flattened bullets were forgotten. I saw the children scatter over the plain and hunt about.

On the appointed day the week after I returned to the tableland confident of success. My young helpers would no doubt have mentioned this lucrative trade in beetle-balls to their comrades and shown their handsels to convince the incredulous. Accordingly I found a larger party assembled than the first time. On seeing me they ran up, but there was no eagerness, no shout of joy. I saw that things had gone ill. Many times on coming out of school had they sought for what I had described, but in vain. Some balls, found underground with the Scarabæus, were brought, but they were mere heaps of food, and there was no grub. Fresh explanations were given and a new appointment was made for the following Thursday. Again the same want of success. The seekers, discouraged, were now few. I made a last appeal, but nothing came of it. Finally, I paid the most zealous, those who had been faithful to the last, and we dissolved partnership. I could count on no one but myself for researches, which seemed simple enough, but really were exceedingly difficult. Even up to the present time, after many years, excavations made in favourable spots and hopeful opportunities have not yet given any clear, consistent result. I am reduced to combining incomplete observations and to filling up gaps by analogy. The little which I have seen, together with observations on other dung beetles—Gymnopleurus, Copris, and Onthophagus—in my enclosure is summed up in the following statement.

The ball destined for the egg is not fashioned in public, in the hurry-scurry of the general workshop. It is a work of art and much patience, demanding minute care impossible amid a crowd. One must retire to meditate one’s plans and set to work, so the mother makes a hollow from four to eight inches deep in the sand. It is a rather spacious hall, communicating with the outside by a much narrower gallery. The insect carries down choice materials, no doubt first rolled into pellets. She must make many journeys, for the contents of the hole are out of all proportion with the door, and could not be carried in at once. I recollect a Spanish Copris which, at the moment I came upon it, was finishing a ball as large as an orange at the bottom of a burrow only communicating with the outside world by means of a gallery where I could but just insert my finger. It is true that the Copris do not roll balls or make long journeys to fetch food. They dig a hole immediately under the dung, and crawl backward with successive loads to the bottom of their cavity. The facility for provisioning and the security offered by working under the manure favour a taste for luxury not to be expected in the same degree among beetles belonging to the rude trade of ball-rollers; but should it return two or three times, Scarabæus sacer can amass wealth of which Copris hispanica might well be jealous.

So far the insect has only raw material, put together anyhow. The first thing to do is to select very carefully, taking what is most delicate for the inner layers, upon which the larva will feed, and the coarser for the outer ones which merely serve as a protecting shell. Then around a central hollow which receives the egg the materials must be arranged layer after layer, according to their decreasing fineness and nutritive value; the strata must be made consistent and adhere one to another; and finally, the bits of fibre in the outside crust, which has to protect the whole thing, must be felted together. How can the Scarabæus, clumsy and stiff as it seems, accomplish such a work in complete darkness, at the bottom of a hole so full of provisions that there is barely room to move? When I think how delicate is the work done and how rude the tools of the workman,—of the angular feet fitted to hollow the ground, and, if need be, even tufa,—I am reminded of an elephant trying to make lace. Explain who can this miracle of maternal industry; I give it up, especially as it has not been my good fortune to see the artist at work. Let us restrict ourselves to describing this masterpiece.

The ball which contains the egg is generally as large as a middle-sized apple. In the midst is an oval cavity about a centimetre in diameter. At the bottom is the egg, fixed vertically; it is cylindrical, rounded at each end, yellowish-white, about as large as a grain of wheat, but shorter. The wall of the hollow is washed over with a greenish-brown, semi-fluid matter, manure cream, destined as the first food of the larva. Does the mother collect the quintessence of the dung to make this delicate food? The look of it tells me that it is a pap prepared in the maternal stomach. The pigeon softens grain in its crop, and turns it into a kind of milk food which it disgorges for its nestlings. It would seem that the beetle shows the same tender care. It half digests the choice food, and disgorges it in the shape of a delicate film to line the walls of the cavity where the egg is laid. Thus, when first hatched, the larva finds food easy of digestion, which rapidly strengthens its stomach and allows it to attack the under layers which lack the same refinement of preparation. Under the semi-fluid paste is a choice pulp, compact and homogeneous, whence every particle of fibre is banished. Beyond are the coarser strata where vegetable fibres abound, and finally the outside of the ball is composed of the coarsest materials felted together into a resistant shell. Manifestly there is a progressive change of diet. On issuing from the egg the feeble grub licks the fine paste on the walls of its dwelling. There is but little of it, still it is strengthening and of high nutritious value. To the bottle of early infancy succeeds the pap of the weanling, intermediate between the dainty fare of the start and the coarse nourishment at the end. This layer is thick enough and abundant enough to make the maggot into a robust grub. Then, strong food for the strong, barley bread with its husks, raw dung full of sharp bits of hay. The larva is superabundantly provisioned with it, and, having attained its growth, comes to the imprisoning outer layer. The capacity of the dwelling has increased with that of its inhabitant. The small original cavity with its excessively thick walls is now a large cell with sides only a few lines thick. The inner layers have turned into larva, nymph, or Scarabæus, as the case may be. In short, the ball is now a shell, hiding within its spacious interior the mysteries of metamorphosis.

My observations go no further; my certificates of the birth and condition of the Scarabæus do not go beyond the egg; I have not actually seen the larva which, however, is known and described by various authors. Neither have I seen the perfect insect while yet enclosed in the cell, previous to exercising its functions as ball-roller and excavator, and that is exactly what I should most have desired to see. I should have liked to find the creature in its birthplace, recently transformed, new to all labour, so that I might have examined the worker’s hand before it set to its tasks, and for the following reason.

Insects have each foot terminated by a kind of finger or tarsus, composed of a series of delicate portions which may be compared to the joints of our fingers. They end in a crooked nail. One claw to each foot is the rule, and this claw, at least in the case of the superior Coleoptera, especially the scavenger beetles, contains five joints. Now by a strange exception, the Scarabæus has no tarsi on its forefeet, while possessing well-shaped ones with five joints on the two other pairs. They are imperfect, maimed, wanting in their front limbs in that which represents, roughly indeed, our hand in an insect. A like anomaly is found in the Onitis and Bubas, also of the scavenger family. Entomology has long noted this curious fact without being able to give a satisfactory explanation. Is it a birth imperfection? Does the beetle come into the world without fingers on its front limbs, or does it lose them as soon as it enters on its toilsome labours?

One might easily suppose such mutilation a consequence of the insect’s hard work. To grope, to excavate, to rake, to divide now among the gravel in the soil, now in the fibrous mass of manure, is not a work in which organs so delicate as the tarsi can be used without danger. Yet graver is it that when the insect is rolling its ball backward, head downward, it is with the end of the forefeet that it grips the ground. What becomes of the weak feet, no thicker than a thread, in this perpetual contact with all the inequalities of the soil? They are useless—merely in the way, and sooner or later they are bound to disappear, crushed, torn off, worn out. Our workmen, alas! are too often maimed by handling heavy tools, and lifting great weights, and the same may be the case with the Scarabæus which rolls a ball that to it is a huge load. In that case the maimed arms would be a noble certificate of a life of toil.

But serious doubts at once suggest themselves. If these mutilations be accidental, and the result of laborious work, they should be the exception, not the rule. Because a workman or several workmen have had a hand crushed in machinery, it does not follow that all others should be maimed. If the Scarabæus often, or even very often, loses the fore-claws in its trade of ball-roller, there must be some which, cleverer or more fortunate, have preserved their tarsi. Let us then consult facts. I have observed a very large number of the species of Scarabæus which inhabit France, the S. sacer, common in Provence; S. semipunctatus, which is seldom found far from the sea, and frequents the sandy shores of Cette, Palavas, and of the Gulf of Juan; also S. longicollis, which is much more widely spread than the two others, and found at least as far up the Rhône Valley as Lyons. Finally, I have observed an African kind, S. cicatricosus, found in the environs of Constantine, and the want of tarsi on the forefeet has proved invariable in all four species, at all events as far as my observations go. Therefore the Scarabæus is maimed from birth, and it must be no accident but a natural peculiarity.

Moreover, we have further proof in another reason. Were the absence of fore-claws accidental, and the consequence of rough labour, there are other insects, especially among the scavenger beetles, which undertake excavations yet more difficult than those of the Scarabæus, and which ought therefore to be still more liable to lose their front claws, as these are useless and in the way when the foot has to serve as a strong tool for excavation. For instance, the Geotrupes, who deserve their name of Earth-piercer so well, make hollows in the hard and beaten soil of paths among pebbles cemented by clay—vertical pits so deep that to reach the lowest cell one has to use powerful digging tools, and even then one does not always succeed. Now these miners par excellence, who easily open long galleries in surroundings whose surface the Scarabæus sacer could hardly disturb, have their front tarsi intact, as if to perforate tufa were a work calling for delicacy rather than strength. Everything then points to the belief that, if observed in its natal cell, the baby Scarabæus would be found mutilated like the veteran who has travelled the world and grown worn with labour.

On this absence of fingers might be based an argument in favour of the theories now in fashion—the struggle for life and the evolution of the species. One might say that the Scarabæus had originally tarsi on all its feet in conformity with the general laws of insect organisation. One way or another, some have lost these embarrassing appendages on their forefeet, they being hurtful rather than useful. Finding themselves the better for this mutilation, which proved favourable to their work, little by little they gained a superiority over the less favoured ones, founded a race by transmitting their fingerless stumps to their descendants, and finally, the primitively fingered insect became the fingerless Scarabæus of our time. I am willing to agree to this reasoning if it could first be demonstrated why, with like labours,—labours even far harder,—the Geotrupes has preserved his tarsi. Meantime let us continue to believe that the first Scarabæus who rolled a ball, perhaps on the shores of some lake where bathed the Palæotherium, was as much without tarsi as him of our own day.

III

CERCERIS BUPRESTICIDA

Every one has met with books which, according to his turn of mind, have been epoch-making, opening to him horizons whose very existence he had never guessed. They throw wide open the gates of a new world where henceforward he will use his mental powers; they are the spark which, falling on a hearth, kindles into flame materials otherwise never utilised. And very often it is mere chance which puts into our hands some book which makes a new starting-point in the evolution of our ideas. The most casual circumstance, a few lines which happen to come under our eye, decide our future and impel us into the path which thenceforward we shall follow. One winter evening, beside a stove where the ashes were yet warm, while my family slept, I was forgetting, while I read, all the cares of the morrow—the black cares of the professor of physics, who, after having piled one university diploma on another and rendered for a quarter of a century services whose merit was not denied, earns for himself and family 1600 francs—less than a groom in a well-to-do household. Such was the shameful parsimony of that day in educational matters; thus did Red tape will it. I was a free-lance, son of my solitary studies. Thus, amid my books I was putting aside acute professorial worries when I chanced to light on an entomological pamphlet which had come into my hands I forget how. It was by the patriarch of entomology of that day, the venerable savant Léon Dufour, on the habits of a Hymenopteron whose prey was the Buprestis. Certainly long ere this I had felt a great interest in insects; from childhood I had delighted in beetles, bees, and butterflies; as far back as I can recollect I see myself enraptured by the splendours of a beetle’s elytra, or the wings of the great Swallowtail butterfly. The materials lay ready on the hearth, but the spark to kindle them had been lacking. The accidental perusal of Léon Dufour’s pamphlet was that spark. I had a mental revelation. So then to arrange lovely beetles in a cork box, to name and classify was not the whole of science; there was something far superior, namely, the close study of the structure, and still more of the faculties of insects. Thrilled by emotion I read of a grand instance of this. A little later, aided by those fortunate circumstances which always befriend the ardent seeker, I published my first entomological work, the complement of Léon Dufour’s. It gained the honours of the Institute of France, a prize for experimental physiology being adjudged to it, and—far sweeter reward!—shortly after I received a most flattering and encouraging letter from the very man who had inspired me. From far away in the Landes the venerated master sent me the cordial expression of his enthusiasm, and urged me to continue my studies. At that recollection my old eyes still grow wet with a holy emotion. Oh, bright days of illusion, of faith in the future, what has become of you!

I hope that the reader will not be sorry to meet with an extract from the pamphlet which was the starting-point of my own researches, the more so that it is necessary for the understanding of what follows. So I will let my Master speak, only abridging slightly:—

In all insect history I know of no fact more curious and extraordinary than that which I am about to relate. It concerns a species of Cerceris which feeds its progeny on the most splendid kinds of Buprestis. Let me share with you, my friend, the vivid impressions gained by studying the habits of this Hymenopteron. In July 1839 a friend, who lives in the country, sent me two Buprestis bifasciata, an insect new to my collection, telling me that a kind of wasp which was carrying one of these pretty beetles had dropped it on his coat, and that a few minutes later a similar wasp had let fall another on the ground. In July 1840, having been called in as physician by my friend, I reminded him of his capture of the preceding year, and asked about the circumstances. Season and place corresponding with it, I hoped to do as much myself, but that particular day was dark and chilly, unfavourable therefore to the flight of Hymenoptera. Nevertheless, we made a tour of inspection in the garden walks, and seeing no insects I bethought myself of seeking in the ground for the homes of burrowing Hymenoptera. A tiny heap of sand recently thrown up, like a miniature mole-hill, attracted my attention. Scratching it away, I saw that it masked the orifice of a gallery descending far down. We carefully dug up the ground with a spade, and soon caught sight of the shining elytra of the coveted Buprestis. Soon I not only found wing-cases but a whole Buprestis, nay, three and four displayed their gold and emerald. I could not believe my eyes. But that was only the prelude to my feast. In the chaos caused by my own exhumations a Hymenopteron appeared and was taken by me; it was the captor of the Buprestis, trying to escape from amid her victims. I recognised an old acquaintance, a Cerceris which I have found some two hundred times in Spain and around Saint Sever.

But my ambition was far from satisfied. It was not enough to know ravisher and prey: I wanted the larva for which all this rich store was laid up. After exhausting the first vein of Buprestis I hastened to make new excavations. Digging down more carefully I finally discovered two larvæ, which completed the good fortune of this campaign. In less than an hour I turned over three haunts of the Cerceris, and my booty was some fifteen whole Buprestids with fragments of a yet greater number. I calculated, and I believe it fell far short of the truth, that there were twenty-five nests in this garden, a fact representing an immense number of buried Buprestids. What must it be, I said to myself, in localities where in a few hours I have caught as many as sixty Cerceris on blossoming garlic, with nests most probably near, and no doubt provisioned quite as abundantly! Imagination, backed by probability, showed me underground, within a small space, B. bifasciata by thousands, although I who have observed the entomology of our parts for over thirty years have never noticed a single one. Once only, perhaps twenty years ago, did I see, sticking in a hole of an ancient oak, the abdomen and elytra of this insect. This fact was a ray of light, for it told me that the larva of B. bifasciata must live in the wood of the oak, and entirely explained the abundance of this beetle in a district where the forests consist chiefly of that tree. As Cerceris bupresticida is rare on the clayey hills of the latter stretch of country compared to the sandy plains where grows Pinus maritima, it became an interesting question whether this Hymenopteron when it inhabits the pine region provisions its nest as it does in the oak district. I had good reason to believe that it did not, and you will soon see with some surprise how exquisite is the entomological tact of our Cerceris in her choice of the numerous kind of Buprestids.

Let us hasten to the pine region to taste new pleasures. The spot to be explored is a garden belonging to a property in the midst of forests of the maritime pines. The haunts of the Cerceris were soon recognised; they were exclusively found in the main paths, where the beaten and compact soil offered the burrowing Hymenoptera sufficient solidity for the construction of their subterranean dwellings. I visited some twenty, and I did it, I may say, by the sweat of my brow. It is a very laborious kind of exploration, for the nests and provisions are only found at the depth of one foot, so that it is necessary to invest the place by a line of square trenches seven or eight inches from the mouth of the hole, first inserting a stalk of grass in the gallery by way of clue. One must sap with a garden spade, so that the central clod, thoroughly detached all round, may be raised in one piece, then reversed on the ground and broken up carefully. Such is the manœuvre which I found successful. You would have shared our enthusiasm at the sight of the beautiful species of Buprestis which this new style of research revealed to our eager gaze. You ought to have heard our exclamations as each time the clod was reversed, new treasures were revealed rendered yet more brilliant by the hot sun, or when we discovered the larvæ of every age attached to their prey, or the cocoons of these larvæ incrusted with copper, bronze, and emerald. I who had been for three or four times ten years, alas! a practical entomologist had never beheld such an enchanting sight or had had such good fortune. We only wanted you to double our enjoyment. With ever increasing admiration we dwelt now on the brilliant Coleoptera and now on the marvellous sagacity of the Cerceris which had buried and laid them up for food. Can you believe it? Out of more than 400 beetles dug up, there was not one which did not belong to the old genus Buprestis! Our Hymenopteron had not committed the smallest error. How much there is to learn from this intelligent industry in so small an insect! What value Latreille would have attached to the vote of this Cerceris in favour of the natural system!

Let us pass on to the various contrivances of the Cerceris in making and provisioning her nest. I have already said that she chooses ground whose surface is beaten, compact, and solid. I should add that this ground must be dry and in full sunshine. This choice shows an intelligence, or, if you like, an instinct, which one is tempted to believe is the result of experience. Crumbly earth or mere sand would of course be easier to work, but then how construct an orifice which will remain wide open for ingress and exit, and a gallery whose walls will not constantly fall in, yield, and become blocked by the least rain? The choice is therefore both reasonable and perfectly well calculated.

Our burrowing Hymenopteron hollows her gallery with her mandibles and front tarsi, which accordingly are furnished with stiff points to act as rakes. The orifice must not only have the diameter of the miner’s body, but be able to admit a prey of larger bulk. This shows admirable forethought. As the Cerceris digs deeper she brings out the rubbish, and this makes the heap which I compared to a tiny molehill. The gallery is not vertical, as this would have exposed it to be filled up by wind or other causes. Not far from the starting-point it makes an angle; its length is from seven to eight inches. At the far end the industrious mother establishes the cradle of her progeny. Five cells, separate and independent of one another, are hollowed in the shape and nearly of the size of an olive; within they are solid and polished. Each can contain three Buprestids, the ordinary allowance for a larva. The Cerceris lays an egg amid the three victims, and then stops up the gallery with earth, so that when once the provisions for the brood are laid in, the cells have no communication with the outside.

Cerceris bupresticida must be an indefatigable, daring, and skilful huntress. The cleanness, the freshness of the beetles which she buries in her den testify that they are seized just as they emerge from the wooden galleries where their final metamorphosis takes place. But what inconceivable instinct urges a creature that lives solely on the nectar of flowers to seek amid a thousand difficulties animal food for carnivorous offspring, which it will never see, and to post itself on trees quite unlike one another, which hide deep in their trunks the insects which are to fall her victims? What entomological tact, yet more inconceivable, makes her lay down a strict law to select them in a single generic group, and to catch species differing very considerably in size, shape, and colour? You observe how unlike are Buprestis biguttata, with its slender long body and dark colour; B. octoguttata, oval-oblong, with great stains of a beautiful yellow on a blue or green ground; and B. micans, three or four times the size of B. biguttata, with a splendid metallic greeny gold.

There is another very singular fact in the manœuvres of our assassin of Buprestids. The buried ones, like those which I have seized in the grasp of their murderers, give no sign of life, and are unquestionably quite dead, yet, as I observed with surprise, no matter when they are dug up, not only do they keep all their freshness of colour, but every bit of them—feet, antennæ, palpi, and the membranes which unite the various parts of their bodies—is perfectly supple and flexible. At first one supposes the explanation, as far as concerns the buried ones, to be in the coolness of the ground, and absence of air and light, and for those taken from their murderers, in the very recent date of death. But observe that after my explorations, having isolated in cones of paper the numerous Buprestids dug up, I have often left them over thirty-six hours before pinning them out. And yet, notwithstanding the dryness and great heat of July, I have always found the same flexibility in the joints. More than this, after that lapse of time, I have dissected several, and their visceræ were as perfectly preserved as if I had used my scalpel on the live insect. Now, long experience has taught me that even in a beetle of this size, when twelve hours have passed in summer after its death, the interior organs are either dried up or corrupted so that it is impossible to be sure of form or structure. There is some peculiarity about Buprestids put to death by the Cerceris which prevents corruption or desiccation for a week, or perhaps two. But what is this peculiarity?

To explain this wonderful preservation which makes an insect dead for several weeks into a piece of game not even high, but, on the contrary, as fresh as when first caught, and that during the greatest heat of summer, the skilful historian of Cerceris bupresticida supposes that there must be an antiseptic liquid acting as do the preparations used in preserving anatomical specimens. This liquid can only be the poison injected by the Hymenopteron into the body of the victim. A minute globule of the venomous humour accompanying the dart or lancet, destined for this purpose, acts as a kind of pickle or antiseptic fluid to preserve the flesh on which the larva is to feed. But then how superior to our processes are those of the Cerceris with regard to preserved food! We salt or smoke or enclose in tins hermetically sealed provisions which remain eatable, to be sure, but which are far, very far from having the qualities of fresh meat. Sardines drowned in oil, Dutch smoked herrings, cod hardened into slabs by salt and sun,—can any of these sustain comparison with the same fish brought alive to the kitchen? For meat properly so-called it is still worse. Beyond salting and drying we have nothing which even for a short period can keep meat eatable. At the present time, after innumerable fruitless attempts of the most varied kind, special ships are equipped at great cost, which, furnished with powerful freezing apparatus, convey to us the flesh of sheep and oxen slaughtered in the Pampas of South America, frozen and kept from corruption by intense cold. How far superior is the method of the Cerceris, so rapid, so cheap, so expeditious! What lessons we should have to learn from such transcendental chemistry when an imperceptible drop of liquid poison renders in an instant the prey incorruptible! What am I saying?—incorruptible?—that is far from being all; the game is put into a condition which prevents desiccation, leaves their suppleness to the limbs, and maintains all the organs in pristine freshness, both the internal and external. In short, the Cerceris puts the insect into a state differing only from life by a corpse-like immobility.