Some are smitten with semiparalysis. A Cetonia-grub, pricked away from the centre on a level with the fore-legs, has her right side flaccid, spread out, incapable of contracting, while the left side swells, wrinkles and contracts. Since the left half no longer receives the symmetrical cooperation of the right half, the grub, instead of curling into the normal volute, closes its spiral on one side and leaves it wide open on the other. The concentration of the nervous apparatus, poisoned by the venom down one side of the body only, a longitudinal half, explains this condition, which is the most remarkable of all. There is nothing to be gained by multiplying these examples. We have seen pretty clearly the great variety of results produced by the haphazard sting of a Bee's abdomen; let us now come to the crux of the matter. Can the Bee's poison reduce the prey to the condition required by the predatory Wasp? Yes, I have proved it by experiment; but the proof calls for so much patience that it seemed to me to suffice when obtained once for each species. In such difficult conditions, with a poison of excessive strength, a single success is conclusive proof; the thing is possible so long as it occurs once. A female Ephippiger is stung at the median point, just a little in front of the fore-legs. Convulsive movements lasting for a few seconds are followed by a fall to one side, with pulsations of the abdomen, flutterings of the antennae and a few feeble movements of the legs. The tarsi cling firmly to the hair-pencil which I hold out to them. I place the insect on its back. It lies motionless. Its state is absolutely the same as that to which the Languedocian Sphex (Cf. "Insect Life": chapter 10.--Translator's Note.) reduces her Ephippigers. For three weeks on end, I see repeated in all its details the spectacle to which I have been accustomed in the victims extracted from the burrows or taken from the huntress: the wide-open mandibles, the quivering palpi and tarsi, the ovipositor shuddering convulsively, the abdomen throbbing at long intervals, the spark of life rekindled at the touch of a pencil. In the fourth week, these signs of life, which have gradually weakened, disappear, but the insect still remains irreproachably fresh. At last a month passes; and the paralysed creature begins to turn brown. It is over; death has come.