In every case the injection of ammonia at once stops all movement in Scarabs, Weevils and Buprestes; but we do not always succeed in reducing the insect to the condition just described. If the wound be too deep, if the drop administered be too strong, the victim really dies; and, in two or three days’ time, we have nothing but a putrid body before us. If the prick, on the other hand, be too slight, the insect, after a longer or shorter period of deep torpor, comes to itself and at least partially recovers its power of motion. The assailant herself may sometimes operate clumsily, just like man, for I have noticed this sort of resurrection in a victim stung by the dart of a Digger-wasp. The Yellow-winged Sphex, whose story will shortly occupy our attention, stacks her lairs with young Crickets first pricked with her poisoned lancet. I have extracted from one of those lairs three poor Crickets whose extreme limpness would, in any other circumstances, have denoted death. But here again death was only apparent. Placed in a flask, these Crickets kept in very good condition, perfectly motionless all the time, for nearly three weeks. In the end, two went mouldy, and the third partly revived, that is to say, he recovered the power of motion in his antennæ, in his mouth-parts and, what is more remarkable, in his first two pair of legs. If the Wasp’s skill sometimes fails to benumb the victim permanently, one can hardly expect invariable success from man’s rough experiments. In the Beetles of the second class, that is to say, those whose thoracic ganglia are some distance apart, the effect of the ammonia is quite different. The least vulnerable are the Ground-beetles. A puncture which would have produced instant annihilation of movement in a large Sacred Beetle produces nothing but violent and disordered convulsions in the medium-sized Ground-beetles, be they Chlænius, Nebria or Calathus. Little by little the insect quiets down and, after a few hours’ rest, its usual movements are resumed as though it had met with no accident whatever. If we repeat the experiment on the same specimen, twice, thrice, or four times over, the results remain the same, until the wound becomes too serious and the insect actually dies, as is proved by its desiccation and putrefaction, which follows soon after.