f the head:
hence the real, not the apparent death of the bee. The Philanthus does
not paralyse merely, but kills.

This is one step gained. The murderer chooses the point below the chin
as the point of attack, in order to reach the principal centres of
innervation, the cephalic ganglions, and thus to abolish life at a
single blow. The vital centres being poisoned, immediate death must
follow. If the object of the Philanthus were merely to cause paralysis
she would plunge her sting into the defective corselet, as does the
Cerceris in attacking the weevil, whose armour is quite unlike the
bee's. Her aim is to kill outright, as we shall presently see; she wants
a corpse, not a paralytic. We must admit that her technique is
admirable; our human murderers could do no better.

Her posture of attack, which is very different to that of the
paralysers, is infallibly fatal to the victim. Whether she delivers the
attack in the erect position or prone, she holds the bee before her,
head to head and thorax to thorax. In this position it suffices to flex
the abdomen in order to reach the joint of the neck, and to plunge the
sting obliquely upwards into the head of the captive. If the bee were
seized in the inverse position, or if the sting were to go slightly
astray, the results would be totally different; the sting, penetrating
the bee in a downward direction, would poison the first thoracic
ganglion and provoke a partial paralysis only. What art, to destroy a
miserable bee! In what fencing-school did the slayer learn that terrible
upward thrust beneath the chin? And as she has learned it, how is it
that her victim, so learned in matters of architecture, so conversant
with the politics of Socialism, has so far learned nothing in her own
defence? As vigorous as the aggressor, she also carries a rapier, which
is even more formidable and more painful in its results--at all events,
when my finger is the victim! For centuries and centuries Philanthus has
stored her cellars with the corpses of bees, yet the innocent victim
submits, and the annual decimation of her race has not taught her how to
deliver herself from the scourge by a well-directed thrust. I am afraid
I shall never succeed in understanding how it is that the assailant has
acquired her genius for sudden murder while the assailed, better armed
and no less powerful, uses her dagger at random, and so far without
effect. If the one has learned something from the prolonged exerc