slender, brownish Looper which I
caught on the jasmine. The attack is not slow in coming. The caterpillar
is grabbed by the neck: lively contortions of the victim, which rolls
the aggressor over and drags her along, now uppermost, now undermost in
the struggle. First the thorax is stung, in its three rings, from
back to front. The sting lingers longest near the throat, in the first
segment. This done, the Ammophila releases her victim and proceeds
to stamp her tarsi, to polish her wings, to stretch herself. Again I
observe the acrobatic postures, the forehead touching the ground, the
hinder part of the body raised. This mimic triumph is the same as that
of the huntress of the Grey Worm. Then the Looper is once more seized.
Despite its contortions, which are not in the least abated by the three
wounds in the thorax, it is stung from front to back in each segment
still unwounded, no matter how many, whether supplied with legs or not.
I expected to see the sting refrain more or less in the long interval
which separates the true legs in front from the pro-legs at the back
(Fleshy legs found on the abdominal segments of caterpillars and certain
other larvae.--Translator's Note.): segments devoid of organs of defence
or locomotion did not seem to me to deserve conscientious surgery. I was
mistaken: not a segment of the Looper is spared, not even the last ones.
It is true that these, being eminently capable of catching hold with
their false legs, would be dangerous later were the Wasp to neglect
them.

I observe, however, that the lancet works more rapidly in the second
part of the operation than in the first, either because the caterpillar,
half subjugated by the triple wound at the outset, is easier to reach
with the sting, or because the segments more remote from the head are
rendered harmless with a smaller injection of poison. Nowhere do we see
repeated the care expended upon paralysing the thorax, still less the
insistent attention to the first segment. On returning to her Looper
after the entr'acte devoted to the joys of success, the Ammophila stabs
so swiftly that, on one occasion, I saw her obliged to begin all over
again. Lightly stung along its whole length, the victim still struggles.
Without hesitation, the operator unsheathes her scalpel for the second
time and operates on the Looper afresh, with the exception of the
thorax, which was already sufficiently anaesthetized. This done, all is
in order; there is no mor