.), bury themselves
in the mould. I can obtain no precise information from them. True, their
thinly scattered cilia and their breastplate of fat form a palisade and
a rampart against the sting, which nearly always enters only a little
way and that obliquely.

Let us leave these unmanageable ones and keep to the Orthoperon, which
is more amenable to experiment. A dagger-thrust, we were saying, kills
it if directed upon the ganglia of the thorax; it throws it into a
transient state of discomfort if directed upon another point. It is,
therefore, by its direct action upon the nervous centres that the poison
reveals its formidable properties.

To generalize and say that death is always near at hand when the sting
is administered in the thoracic ganglia would be going too far: it
occurs frequently, but there are a good many exceptions, resulting from
circumstances impossible to define. I cannot control the direction of
the sting, the depth attained, the quantity of poison shed; and the
stump of the Bee is very far from making up for my shortcomings. We have
here not the cunning sword-play of the predatory insect, but a casual
blow, ill-placed and ill-regulated. Any accident is possible, therefore,
from the gravest to the mildest. Let us mention some of the more
interesting.

An adult Praying Mantis (Mantis religiosa, so-called because the toothed
fore-legs, in which it catches and kills its prey, adopt, when folded,
an attitude resembling that of prayer.--Translator's Note.) is pricked
level with the attachment of the predatory legs. Had the wound been in
the centre, I should have witnessed an occurrence which, although I have
seen it many times, still arouses my liveliest emotion and surprise.
This is the sudden paralysis of the warrior's savage harpoons. No
machinery stops more abruptly when the mainspring breaks. As a rule, the
inertia of the predatory legs attacks the others in the course of a day
or two; and the palsied one dies in less than a week. But the present
sting is not in the exact centre. The dart has entered near the base
of the right leg, at less than a millimetre (.039 inch.--Translator's
Note.) from the median point. That leg is paralysed at once; the other
is not; and the insect employs it to the detriment of my unsuspecting
fingers, which are pricked to bleeding-point by the spike at the
tip. Not until to-morrow is the leg which wounded me to-day rendered
motionless. This time, the paralysis goes no fa