To explain this wonderful preservation which makes an insect dead for several weeks into a piece of game not even high, but, on the contrary, as fresh as when first caught, and that during the greatest heat of summer, the skilful historian of Cerceris bupresticida supposes that there must be an antiseptic liquid acting as do the preparations used in preserving anatomical specimens. This liquid can only be the poison injected by the Hymenopteron into the body of the victim. A minute globule of the venomous humour accompanying the dart or lancet, destined for this purpose, acts as a kind of pickle or antiseptic fluid to preserve the flesh on which the larva is to feed. But then how superior to our processes are those of the Cerceris with regard to preserved food! We salt or smoke or enclose in tins hermetically sealed provisions which remain eatable, to be sure, but which are far, very far from having the qualities of fresh meat. Sardines drowned in oil, Dutch smoked herrings, cod hardened into slabs by salt and sun,—can any of these sustain comparison with the same fish brought alive to the kitchen? For meat properly so-called it is still worse. Beyond salting and drying we have nothing which even for a short period can keep meat eatable. At the present time, after innumerable fruitless attempts of the most varied kind, special ships are equipped at great cost, which, furnished with powerful freezing apparatus, convey to us the flesh of sheep and oxen slaughtered in the Pampas of South America, frozen and kept from corruption by intense cold. How far superior is the method of the Cerceris, so rapid, so cheap, so expeditious! What lessons we should have to learn from such transcendental chemistry when an imperceptible drop of liquid poison renders in an instant the prey incorruptible! What am I saying?—incorruptible?—that is far from being all; the game is put into a condition which prevents desiccation, leaves their suppleness to the limbs, and maintains all the organs in pristine freshness, both the internal and external. In short, the Cerceris puts the insect into a state differing only from life by a corpse-like immobility.