The murderess soon makes her arrangements. She places herself belly to belly with her adversary, but in the opposite direction, grasps one of the threads at the tip of the Cricket’s abdomen with her mandibles and masters with her fore-legs the convulsive efforts of his thick hinder thighs. At the same time, her middle-legs hug the heaving sides of the beaten insect; and her hind-legs, pressing like two levers on the front of the head, force the joint of the neck to open wide. The Sphex then curves her abdomen vertically, so as to offer only an unattackable convex surface to the Cricket’s mandibles; and we see, not without emotion, its poisoned lancet drive once into the victim’s neck, next into the joint of the front two segments of the thorax, and lastly towards the abdomen. In less time than it takes to relate, the murder is consummated; and the Sphex, after adjusting the disorder of her toilet, makes ready to haul home the victim, whose limbs are still quivering in the throes of death. Let us consider for a moment the excellence of the tactics of which I have given a feeble glimpse. The Cerceris attacks a passive adversary, incapable of flight, almost devoid of offensive weapons, whose sole chances of safety lie in a stout cuirass, the weak point of which, however, is known to the murderess. But what a difference here! The quarry is armed with dreadful mandibles, capable of disembowelling the assailant if they succeed in seizing her; it sports a pair of powerful legs, regular clubs bristling with a double row of sharp spikes, which can be used either to enable the Cricket to hop out of his enemy’s reach, or to send her sprawling with brutal kicks. Observe, therefore, the precautions which the Sphex takes before setting her sting in motion. The victim, turned upon his back, cannot, for lack of any purchase, use his hind-levers to escape with, which he certainly would do if he were attacked in the normal position, as are the big Weevils of the Great Cerceris. His spurred legs, mastered by the Sphex’ fore-feet, cannot act as offensive weapons either; and his mandibles, kept at a distance by the Wasp’s hind-legs, open in wide menace without being able to seize a thing. But it is not enough for the Sphex to render her Cricket incapable of hurting her; she must also hold him so firmly pinioned that he cannot make the slightest movement capable of diverting the sting from the points at which the poison is to be injected; and it is probably with the object of stilling the movements of the abdomen that one of its terminal threads is grasped. No, if a fertile imagination had allowed itself free scope to invent a plan of attack at will, it could not have contrived anything better; and it is open to doubt whether the athletes of the classic palestræ, when grappling with an adversary, boasted more scientific attitudes.