Ah, I now understand why the Sphex does not use her sting to injure the cervical ganglia! A drop of poison injected here, at the centre of vital force, would destroy the whole nervous system; and death would follow soon after. But it is not death that the huntress wishes to obtain; the larvæ have not the least use for dead game, for a corpse, in short, smelling of corruption; and all that she wants to bring about is a lethargy, a passing torpor, which will put a stop to the victim’s resistance during the carting process, this resistance being difficult to overcome and moreover dangerous for the Sphex. The torpor is obtained by a method known in laboratories of experimental physiology: compression of the brain. The Sphex acts like a Flourens, [30] who, laying bare an animal’s brain and bearing upon the cerebral mass, forthwith suppresses intelligence, will, sensibility and movement. The pressure is removed; and everything reappears. Even so do the remains of the Ephippiger’s life reappear, as the lethargic effects of a skilfully-directed pressure pass off. The ganglia of the skull, squeezed between the mandibles but without fatal contusions, gradually recover their activity and put an end to the general torpor. Admit that it is all alarmingly scientific. Fortune has her entomological whims: you run after her and catch no glimpse of her; you forget about her and behold, she comes tapping at your door! How vainly I watched and waited, how many useless journeys I made to see the Languedocian Sphex sacrifice her Ephippigers! Twenty years pass; these pages are in the printer’s hands; and, one day early this month, on the 8th of August 1878, my son Emile comes rushing into my study: ‘Quick!’ he shouts. ‘Come quick: there’s a Sphex dragging her prey under the plane-trees, outside the door of the yard!’ Emile knew all about the business, from what I had told him, to amuse him when we used to sit up late, and better still from similar incidents which he had witnessed in our life out of doors. He is right. I run out and see a magnificent Languedocian Sphex dragging a paralysed Ephippiger by the antennæ. She is making for the hen-house close by and seems anxious to scale the wall, with the object of fixing her burrow under some tile on the roof; for, a few years ago, in the same place, I saw a Sphex of the same species accomplish the ascent with her game and make her home under the arch of a badly-joined tile. Perhaps the present Wasp is descended from the one who performed that arduous climb.