seek to escape; the polished, vertical surface
is for them quite easy to walk upon. They presently quiet down, and the
brigand begins to notice her surroundings. The antennae point forward,
seeking information; the hinder legs are drawn up with a slight
trembling, as of greed and rapacity, in the thighs; the head turns to
the right and the left, and follows the evolutions of the bees against
the glass. The posture of the scoundrelly insect is strikingly
expressive; one reads in it the brutal desires of a creature in ambush,
the cunning patience that postpones attack. The choice is made, and
Philanthus throws herself upon her victim.

Turn by turn tumbled and tumbling, the two insects roll over and over.
But the struggle soon quiets down, and the assassin commences to plunder
her prize. I have seen her adopt two methods. In the first, more usual
than the other, the bee is lying on the ground, upon its back, and
Philanthus, mouth to mouth and abdomen to abdomen, clasps it with her
six legs, while she seizes its neck in her mandibles. The abdomen is
then curved forward and gropes for a moment for the desired spot in the
upper part of the thorax, which it finally reaches. The sting plunges
into the victim, remains in the wound for a moment, and all is over.
Without loosing the victim, which is still tightly clasped, the murderer
restores her abdomen to the normal position and holds it pressed against
that of the bee.

By the second method Philanthus operates standing upright. Resting on
the hinder feet and the extremity of the folded wings, she rises proudly
to a vertical position, holding the bee facing her by her four anterior
claws. In order to get the bee into the proper position for the final
stroke, she swings the poor creature round and back again with the
careless roughness of a child dandling a doll. Her pose is magnificent,
solidly based upon her sustaining tripod, the two posterior thighs and
the end of the wings, she flexes the abdomen forwards and upwards, and,
as before, stings the bee in the upper part of the thorax. The
originality of her pose at the moment of striking surpasses anything I
have ever witnessed.

The love of knowledge in matters of natural history is not without its
cruelties. To make absolutely certain of the point attained by the
sting, and to inform myself completely concerning this horrible talent
for murder, I have provoked I dare not confess how many assassinations
in captivity. Witho