e movement.

After the stiletto the hooks of the mandibles rarely fail to intervene.
Long and curved, they nibble at the paralysed victim's neck, sometimes
from above, sometimes from below. It is a repetition of what the Hairy
Ammophila showed us: the same sudden squeezes of the pincers, with
rather long intervals between. These intervals, these measured bites and
the insect's watchful attitude have every appearance of telling us that
the operator is noting the effect produced before giving a fresh pinch
of the nippers.

It will be seen how valuable is the evidence of Jules' Ammophila:
it tells us that the immolaters of Looper caterpillars and those of
ordinary caterpillars follow precisely the same method; that victims
displaying very dissimilar external structure do not entail any
modification of the operative tactics so long as the internal
organization remains the same. The number, arrangement and degree of
mutual independence of the nerve-centres guide the sting; the anatomy of
the game, rather than its form, controls the huntress' tactics.

Let me mention, before I dismiss the subject, a superb example of this
marvellous anatomical discrimination. I once took from between the legs
of a Hairy Ammophila, which had just paralysed it, a caterpillar of
Dicranura vinula. What a strange capture compared with the ordinary
caterpillar! Bridling in thick folds beneath its pink neckerchief,
its fore-part raised in a sphinx-like attitude, its hinder-part slowly
waving two long caudal threads, the curious animal is no caterpillar
to the schoolboy who brings it to me, nor to the man who comes upon
it while cutting his bundle of osiers; but it is a caterpillar to the
Ammophila, who treats it accordingly. I explore the queer creature's
segments with the point of a needle. All are insensitive; all therefore
have been stung.

CHAPTER 12. THE METHOD OF THE SCOLIAE.

After the Ammophilae, the paralysers who multiply their lancet-thrusts
to destroy the influence of the various nerve-centres, excepting those
of the head, it seemed advisable to interrogate other insects which also
are accustomed to a naked prey, vulnerable at all points save the
head, but which deliver only a single thrust of the sting. Of these two
conditions the Scoliae fulfilled one, with their regular quarry, the
tender Cetonia-, Oryctes-or Anoxia-larva, according to the Scolia's
species. Did they fulfil the second? I was convinced beforehand that
they did