sufficient compass to take in so large a bulk and they slip off the round, polished skull. She makes several fresh endeavours, each time without result. She is at length convinced of the uselessness of her efforts. She draws back a little to one side and appears to be renouncing further attempts. One would say that she was discouraged; at least, she smooths her wings with her hind-legs, while with her front tarsi, which she first puts into her mouth, she washes her eyes. This, so it has always seemed to me, is a sign in Hymenoptera of giving up a job. Nevertheless there is no lack of parts by which the Ephippiger might be seized and dragged along as easily as by the antennæ and the palpi. There are the six legs, there is the ovipositor: all organs slender enough to be gripped boldly and to serve as hauling-ropes. I agree that the easiest way to effect the storing is to introduce the prey head first, drawn down by the antennæ; but it would enter almost as readily if drawn by a leg, especially one of the front legs, for the orifice is wide and the passage short or sometimes even non-existent. Then how is it that the Sphex did not once try to seize one of the six tarsi or the tip of the ovipositor, whereas she attempted the impossible, the absurd, in striving to grip, with her much too short mandibles, the huge skull of her prey? Can it be that the idea did not occur to her? Then we will try to suggest it. I offer her, right under her mandibles, first a leg, next the end of the abdominal rapier. The insect obstinately refuses to bite; my repeated blandishments lead to nothing. A singular huntress, to be embarrassed by her game, not knowing how to seize it by a leg when she is not able to take it by the horns! Perhaps my prolonged presence and the unusual events that have just occurred have disturbed her faculties. Then let us leave the Sphex to herself, between her Ephippiger and her burrow; let us give her time to collect herself and, in the calm of solitude, to think out some way of managing her business. I leave her therefore and continue my walk; and, two hours later, I return to the same place. The Sphex is gone, the burrow is still open, and the Ephippiger is lying just where I placed her. Conclusion: the Wasp has tried nothing; she went away, abandoning everything, her home and her game, when, to utilize them both, all that she had to do was to take her prey by one leg. And so this rival of Flourens, who but now was startling us with her cleverness as she dexterously squeezed her victim’s brain to produce lethargy, becomes incredibly helpless in the simplest case outside her usual habits. She, who so well knows how to attack a victim’s thoracic ganglia with her sting and its cervical ganglia with her mandibles; she, who makes such a judicious difference between a poisoned prick annihilating the vital influence of the nerves for ever and a pressure causing only momentary torpor, cannot grip her prey by this part when it is made impossible