utation
of the death-penalty? Can an accident ever happen in the Bee's favour?
Perhaps.

One incident strengthens my faith in this perhaps. I had placed four
Bees and as many Eristales under the bell-glass at the same time, with
the object of estimating the Philanthus' entomological knowledge in the
matter of the distinction of species. Reciprocal quarrels break out
in the mixed colony. Suddenly, in the midst of the fray, the killer is
killed. She tumbles over on her back, she waves her legs; she is dead.
Who struck the blow? It was certainly not the excitable but pacific
Drone-fly; it was one of the Bees, who struck home by accident during
the thick of the fight. Where and how? I cannot tell. The incident
occurs only once in my notes, but it throws a light upon the question.
The Bee is capable of withstanding her adversary; she can then and there
slay her would-be slayer with a thrust of the sting. That she does
not defend herself to better purpose, when she falls into her enemy's
clutches, is due to her ignorance of fencing and not to the weakness
of her weapon. And here again arises, more insistently than before, the
question which I asked above: how is it that the Philanthus has learnt
for offensive what the Bee has not learnt for defensive purposes? I see
but one answer to the difficulty: the one knows without having learnt;
the other does not know because she is incapable of learning.

Let us now consider the motives that induce the Philanthus to kill her
Bee instead of paralysing her. When the crime has been perpetrated,
she manipulates her dead victim without letting go of it for a
moment, holding its belly pressed against her own six legs. I see
her recklessly, very recklessly, rooting with her mandibles in the
articulation of the neck, sometimes also in the larger articulation of
the corselet, behind the first pair of legs, an articulation of whose
delicate membrane she is perfectly well aware, even though, when using
her sting, she did not take advantage of this point, which is the most
readily accessible of all. I see her rough-handling the Bee's belly,
squeezing it against her own abdomen, crushing it in the press. The
recklessness of the treatment is striking; it shows that there is no
need for keeping up precautions. The Bee is a corpse; and a little
hustling here and there will not deteriorate its quality, provided there
be no effusion of blood. In point of fact, however rough the handling, I
fail to d