Man has been instructed in many things by lower animals, but there is yet much to be learned. It is said that the first suspension bridge across the Niagara was constructed after the plainest sort of hint from a spider. Yet we have never found the name of Mr. Spider cut upon the buttresses of a bridge. Who knows but that the builders of the pyramids of ancient Egypt copied their engineering plans from the ants who for generations had pursued similar methods in the architecture of their cities? Spiders had been ballooning for many centuries before man swung his first parachute to the breeze. In fact, there is a species of spider, which, although they have no wings, are able to spin for themselves a sort of apparatus by means of which they navigate the air; yet man, with all his boasted intelligence, has not accomplished this, even with the most complicated machinery. So I might go on to suggest many mechanical and economic contrivances used by lower animals, some of which man has copied but many of which he has as yet been unable to equal. Before the first potter of old had fashioned a vase or a jug the Eumenes fraterna had constructed his dainty little jugs of mud. But the making of jugs is not the only art man might learn from this little wasp. Upon examination we find the jug filled with small green caterpillars. After depositing her egg Mrs. Wasp thus provides for her baby when it shall appear upon the field of action. Now the peculiar part of this proceeding to which I wish to call attention is that the worm is not dead, but is merely in a comatose state. If it had been killed it would have putrified and entirely disappeared before the young wasp was hatched. Furthermore, the young wasp is fond of fresh caterpillar steak, preferably from the living animal. So Mrs. Wasp must have a method of preserving the fresh living victim for her rapacious progeny next spring, while he is too young to hunt for himself, and while the caterpillars are still securely hiding in their mummy cases, Mrs. Wasp finds the venturesome young caterpillar crawling somewhere, and pouncing upon him, carefully inserts her sting into the nerve ganglia that are located in a line along his dorsal surface. We don’t know how she learned the exact location of the ganglia and that a few well-directed stabs will produce more effect than hundreds of misdirected thrusts in other parts of the body, but it is certainly true that she selects the very segments in which the ganglia are located to inflict the wound. And she had the location of these nerve centers for a long time before biologists made the discovery. What a fine thing it would be for the biologist if he could learn the secret of thus preserving living animals instead of the stiff, discolored and uninteresting alcoholic specimens. Then think of the economic value of such a discovery. Animals could be fattened in summer at much smaller expense and then injected and set away until needed.