We saw that the larva began on the stomach of the second cricket, this being the most juicy and fattest part. Like a child who first licks off the jam on his bread, and then bites the slice with contemptuous tooth, it goes straight to what is best, the abdominal intestines, leaving the flesh, which must be extracted from its horny sheath, until it can be digested deliberately. But when first hatched it is not thus dainty: it must take the bread first and the jam later, and it has no choice but to bite its first mouthful from the middle of the victim’s chest, exactly where its mother placed the egg. It is rather tougher, but the spot is a secure one, on account of the deep inertia into which three stabs have thrown the thorax. Elsewhere, there would be, generally, if not always, spasmodic convulsions which would detach the feeble thing and expose it to terrible risks amid a heap of victims whose hind legs, toothed like a saw, might occasionally kick, and whose jaws could still grip. Thus it is motives of security, and not the habits of the grub, which determine the mother where to place its egg. A suspicion suggests itself to me as to this. The first cricket, the ration on which the egg is laid, exposes the grub to more risks than do the others. First, the larva is still a weakly creature; next, the victim was only recently stung, and therefore in the likeliest state for displaying some remains of life. This first cricket has to be as thoroughly paralysed as possible, and therefore it is stabbed three times. But the others, whose torpor deepens as time passes,—the others which the larvæ only attack when grown strong,—have they to be treated as carefully? Might not a single stab, or two, suffice to bring on a gradual paralysis while the grub devours its first allowance? The poison is too precious to be squandered; it is powder and shot for the Sphex, only to be used economically. At all events, if at one time I have been able to see a victim stabbed thrice, at another I have only seen two wounds given. It is true that the quivering point of the Sphex’s abdomen seemed seeking a favourable spot for a third wound; but if really given, it escaped my observation. I incline to believe that the victim destined to be eaten first always is stabbed three times, but that economy causes the others only to be struck twice. The study of the caterpillar-hunting Ammophila will later confirm this suspicion.