e-holder.

Who would think of connecting two creatures so unlike, of calling them
by the same name? Outside the professional classifiers, no one would
dare to. The Cerceris, more perspicacious, knows each of them for a
Weevil, a quarry with a concentrated nervous system, lending itself to
the surgical feat of her single stroke of the lancet. After obtaining an
abundant booty at the cost of the blunt-mouthed insect, with which
she sometimes stuffs her cellars to the exclusion of any other fare,
according to the hazards of the chase, she now suddenly sees before her
the creature with the extravagant proboscis. Accustomed to the first,
will she fail to know the second? By no means: at the first glance she
recognizes it as her own; and the cell already furnished with a few
Brachyderes receives its complement of Balanini. If these two species
are to seek, if the burrows are far from the holm-oaks, the Cerceris
will attack Weevils displaying the greatest variety of genus, species,
form and coloration, levying tribute indifferently on Sitones,
Cneorhini, Geonemi, Otiorhynchi, Strophosomi and many others.

In vain do I rack my brains merely to guess at the signs upon which
the huntress relies as a guide, without going outside one and the
same group, in the midst of such a variety of game; above all by what
characteristics she recognizes as a Weevil the strange Acorn Balaninus,
the only one among her victims that wears a long pipe-stem. I leave to
evolutionism, atavism and other transcendental "isms" the honour and
also the risk of explaining what I humbly recognize as being too far
beyond my grasp. Because the son of the bird-catcher who imitates
the call of his victims has been fed on roast Robins, Linnets and
Chaffinches, shall we hastily conclude that this education through the
stomach will enable him later, without other initiation than that of
the spit, to know his way about the ornithological groups and to avoid
confusing them when his turn comes to set his limed twigs? Will the
digesting of a ragout of little birds, however often repeated by him
or his ascendants, suffice to make him a finished bird-catcher?
The Cerceris has eaten Weevil; her ancestors have all eaten Weevil,
religiously. If you see in this the reason that makes the Wasp a
Weevil-expert endowed with a perspicacity unrivalled save by that of a
professional entomologist, why should you refuse to admit that the same
consequences would follow in the bird-cat