What I do understand more clearly, after all these investigations, is the tactics of the Philanthus. When witnessing her ferocious feasting, the real reason of which was unknown to me, I heaped the most ill-sounding epithets upon her, calling her a murderess, a bandit, a pirate, a robber of the dead. Ignorance is always evil-tongued; the man who does not know indulges in rude assertions and mischievous interpretations. Now that my eyes have been opened to the facts, I hasten to apologize and to restore the Philanthus to her place in my esteem. In draining the crops of her Bees the mother is performing the most praiseworthy of all actions: she is protecting her family against poison. If she happens to kill on her own account and to abandon the corpse after making it disgorge, I dare not reckon this against her as a crime. When the habit has been formed of emptying the Bee's crop with a good motive, there is a great temptation to do it again with no other excuse than hunger. Besides, who knows? Perhaps there is always at the back of her hunting some thought of game which might be useful for the larvae. Although not carried into effect, the intention excuses the deed. I therefore withdraw my epithets in order to admire the insect's maternal logic and to hold it up to the admiration of others. The honey would be pernicious to the health of the larvae. How does the mother know that the syrup, a treat for her, is unwholesome for her young? To this question our science offers no reply. The honey, I say, would imperil the grubs' lives, The Bee must therefore first be made to disgorge. The disgorging must be effected without lacerating the victim, which the nurseling must receive in the fresh state; and the operation is impracticable on a paralysed insect because of the resistance of the stomach. The Bee must therefore be killed outright instead of being paralysed, or the honey will not be voided. Instantaneous death can be inflicted only by wounding the primordial centre of life. The sting must therefore aim at the cervical ganglia, the seat of innervation on which the rest of the organism depends. To reach them there is only one way, through the little gap in the throat. It is here therefore that the sting must be inserted; and it is here in fact that it is inserted, in a spot hardly as large as the twenty-fifth of an inch square. Suppress a single link of this compact chain, and the Bee-fed Philanthus becomes impossible.