e fully confirmed by direct
examination. After forty-eight hours in benzine, which dissolves the fat
and renders the nervous system more plainly visible, the Cetonia-grub is
subjected to dissection. Those of my readers who are familiar with these
investigations will understand my delight. What a clever school is the
Scolia's! It is just as I thought! Admirable! The thoracic and abdominal
ganglia are gathered into a single nervous mass, situated within the
quadrilateral bounded by the four hinder legs, which legs are very near
the head. It is a tiny, dull-white cylinder, about three millimetres
long by half a millimetre wide. (.117 x.019 inch.--Translator's Note.)
This is the organ which the Scolia's sting must attack in order to
secure the paralysis of the whole body, excepting the head, which is
provided with special ganglia. From it run numbers of filaments which
actuate the feet and the powerful muscular layer which is the creature's
essential motor organ. When examined merely through the pocket-lens,
this cylinder appears to be slightly furrowed transversely, a proof of
its complex structure. Under the microscope, it is seen to be formed by
the close juxtaposition, the welding, end to end, of the ganglia, which
can be distinguished one from the other by a slight intermediate groove.
The bulkiest are the first, the fourth and the tenth, or last; these are
all very nearly of equal size. The rest are barely half or even a third
as large as those mentioned.

The Interrupted Scolia experiences the same hunting and surgical
difficulties when she attacks, in the crumbling, sandy soil, the
larvae of the Shaggy Anoxia or of the Morning Anoxia, according to the
district; and these difficulties, if they are to be overcome, demand in
the victim a concentrated nervous system, like the Cetonia's. Such is my
logical conviction before making my examination; such also is the result
of direct observation. When subjected to the scalpel, the larva of the
Morning Anoxia shows me its centres of innervation for the thorax and
the abdomen, gathered into a short cylinder, which, placed very far
forward, almost immediately after the head, does not run back beyond the
level of the second pair of legs. The vulnerable point is thus easily
accessible to the sting, despite the creature's posture of defence, in
which it contracts and coils up. In this cylinder I recognize eleven
ganglia, one more than in the Cetonia. The first three, or thoracic,