specimen, which
was to teach me curious matters about the effects of an ill-delivered
stroke. If I myself had made the insect sting at this or that point,
there would have been no particular interest in it: the Scolia, held
between the finger-tips, would wound at random, like a Bee defending
herself; her undirected sting would inject the poison at haphazard.
But here everything happened by rule, except for the little error of
position.

Well, the victim of this clumsy operation has its legs paralysed only on
the left side, the side towards which the weapon was deflected; it is
a case of hemiplegia. The legs on the right side move. If the operation
had been performed in the normal fashion the result would have been
sudden inertia of all six legs. The hemiplegia, it is true does not last
long. The torpor of the left half rapidly gains the right half of the
body and the creature lies motionless, incapable of burying itself in
the mould, without, however, realizing the conditions indispensable to
the safety of the egg or the young grub. If I seize one of its legs or
a point of the skin with the tweezers, it suddenly shrivels and curls
up and swells out again, as it does when in complete possession of its
energies. What would become of an egg laid on such victuals? At the
first closing of this ruthless vice, at the first contraction, it would
be crushed, or at least detached from its place; and any egg removed
from the point where the mother has fastened it is bound to perish. It
needs, on the Cetonia's abdomen, a yielding support which the bites of
the new-born larva will not set aquiver. The slightly eccentric sting
gives none of this soft mass of fat, always outstretched and quiescent.
Only on the following day, after the torpor has made progress, does the
larva become suitably inert and limp. But it is too late; and in the
meantime the egg would be in serious danger on this half-paralysed
victim. The sting, by straying less than a millimetre, would leave the
Scolia without progeny.

I promised fractions. Here they are. Let us consider the Tarantula and
the Epeira on whom the Calicurgi have just operated. The first thrust
of the sting is delivered in the mouth. In both victims the poison-fangs
are absolutely lifeless: tickling with a bit of straw never once
succeeds in making them open. On the other hand, the palpi, their very
near neighbours, their adjuncts as it were, possess their customary
mobility. Without any pre