The Scoliæ have taught me no more than I have said, for lack of subjects belonging to other species. No matter: the results obtained constitute, to my mind, no small triumph. After seeing the Scoliæ at work, I said to myself, guided merely by the anatomical structure of the victims, that the grubs of Cetonia, of Anoxia, of Oryctes must be paralyzed with a single prick of the sting; I even specified the point at which the dagger had to strike, a central point in the immediate neighbourhood of the fore-legs. Of the three kinds of sacrificers, two allowed me to be present at their surgical operation, which the third, I am certain, will not contradict. In both cases, a single blow of the lancet; in both cases, an inoculation with the poison at the place settled in advance. No calculator in an observatory could show greater accuracy in foretelling the position of his planet. An idea may be considered proved when it attains this mathematical anticipation of the future, this positive knowledge of the unknown. When will the extollers of chance achieve a like success? Order calls for order; and chance has no rule. THE RINGED CALICURGUS CHAPTER XII THE RINGED CALICURGUS The non-cuirassed victims, pervious to the sting over almost the whole of their body, such as Common Caterpillars and “Land-surveying” Caterpillars, Cetonia and Anoxia grubs, whose sole means of defence, apart from their mandibles, consists in rollings and contortions, summoned another prey to my glass bell: the Spider, almost as ill-protected, but armed with formidable poison-fangs. How, more particularly, does the Ringed Calicurgus, or Pompilus, set to work to deal with the black-bellied Tarantula, the terrible Lycosa Narbonensis, who slays mole and sparrow with a bite and imperils the life of man? How does the bold Pompilus overcome an adversary stronger than herself, better-endowed in virulence of poison and capable of making a meal of her assailant? Among the hunting insects, none faces such disproportionate contests, in which appearances seem to point to the aggressor as the prey and to the prey as the aggressor. The problem deserved patient study. True, judging by the Spider’s structure, I anticipated a single stab in the centre of the thorax; but this did not explain the victory of the Hymenopteron, emerging safe and sound from her encounter with a quarry of that description. The matter must be looked into. The chief difficulty is the scarcity of the Calicurgus. To obtain the Tarantula is easy enough: the part of the neighbouring upland as yet untilled by the vine-planters supplies me with as many as I need. To capture the Calicurgus is a different story. I count upon her so little that I consider a special search quite useless. To look for one would, perhaps, be the very way not to find one. Let us leave it to chance to decide whether I shall have one or not.