rection
which other Hymenoptera enjoy. She has in her favour a memory for places
and nothing more. A deviation amounting to two or three of our strides
is enough to make her lose her way and to keep her from returning to
her people, whereas miles across unknown country will not foil the
Mason-bee. I expressed my surprise, just now, that man was deprived of
a wonderful sense wherewith certain animals are endowed. The enormous
distance between the two things compared might furnish matter for
discussion. In the present case, the distance no longer exists: we have
to do with two insects very near akin, two Hymenoptera. Why, if they
issue from the same mould, has one a sense which the other has not, an
additional sense, constituting a much more overpowering factor than the
structural details? I will wait until the evolutionists condescend to
give me a valid reason.

To return to this memory for places whose tenacity and fidelity I have
just recognized: to what degree does it consent to retain impressions?
Does the Amazon require repeated journeys in order to learn her
geography, or is a single expedition enough for her? Are the line
followed and the places visited engraved on her memory from the first?
The Red Ant does not lend herself to the tests that might furnish the
reply: the experimenter is unable to decide whether the path followed by
the expeditionary column is being covered for the first time, nor is it
in his power to compel the legion to adopt this or that different
road. When the Amazons go out to plunder the Ant-hills, they take the
direction which they please; and we are not allowed to interfere with
their march. Let us turn to other Hymenoptera for information.

I select the Pompili, whose habits we shall study in detail in a later
chapter. (For the Wasp known as the Pompilus, or Ringed Calicurgus,
cf. "The Life and Love of the Insect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 12.--Translator's Note.) They are
hunters of Spiders and diggers of burrows. The game, the food of the
coming larva, is first caught and paralysed; the home is excavated
afterwards. As the heavy prey would be a grave encumbrance to the Wasp
in search of a convenient site, the Spider is placed high up, on a tuft
of grass or brushwood, out of the reach of marauders, especially Ants,
who might damage the precious morsel in the lawful owner's absence.
After fixing her booty on the verdant pinnacle, the Pompilu