show that the organs of primary importance are the last to be
attacked? Does it not prove that there is a progressive dismemberment
passing from the less essential to the indispensable?

Would you like to see what becomes of a Cetonia-larva when the organism
is wounded in its vital centres at the very beginning? The experiment
is an easy one; and I made a point of trying it. A sewing-needle, first
softened and flattened into a blade, then retempered and sharpened,
gives me a most delicate scalpel. With this instrument I make a fine
incision, through which I remove the mass of nerves whose remarkable
structure we shall soon have occasion to study. The thing is done: the
wound, which does not look serious, has left the creature a corpse, a
real corpse. I lay my victim on a bed of moist earth, in a jar with a
glass lid; in fact, I establish it in the same conditions as those of
the larvae on which the Scoliae feed. By the next day, without changing
shape, it has turned a repulsive brown; presently it dissolves into
noisome putrescence. On the same bed of earth, under the same glass
cover, in the same moist, warm atmosphere, the larvae three-quarters
eaten by the Scoliae retain, on the contrary, the appearance of healthy
flesh.

If a single stroke of my dagger, fashioned from the point of a needle,
results in immediate death and early putrefaction; if the repeated bites
of the Scolia gut the creature's body and reduce it almost to a skin
without completely killing it, the striking contrast between these two
results must be due to the relative importance of the organs injured. I
destroy the nerve-centres and inevitably kill my larva, which is putrid
by the following day; the Scolia attacks the reserves of fat, the blood,
the muscles and does not kill its victim, which will provide it with
wholesome food until the end. But it is clear that, if the Scolia were
to set to work as I did, there would be nothing left, after the first
few bites, but an actual corpse, discharging fluids which would be fatal
to it within twenty-four hours. The mother, it is true, in order to
assure the immobility of her prey, has injected the poison of her sting
into the nerve-centres. Her operation cannot be compared with mine in
any respect. She practises the method of the skilful physiologist who
induces anaesthesia; I go to work like the butcher who chops, cuts and
disembowels. The sting leaves the nerve-centres intact. Deprived
of sensibility by