More Hunting Wasps

To meet among the Wasps, those eager lovers of flowers, a species that goes hunting more or less on its own account is certainly a notable event. That the larder of the grub sho...

Brillat-Savarin, when pronouncing his famous maxim, "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," certainly never suspected the signal confirmation which the entomolo...

(This essay should be read in conjunction with that on the Black-bellied Tarantula. Cf. "The Life of the Spider," by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos:...

The Scolia's egg is in no way exceptional in shape. It is white, cylindrical, straight and about four millimetres long by one millimetre thick. (About.156 x.039 inch.--Translato...

No idea of any scope can begin its soaring flight but straightway the curmudgeons are after it, eager to break its wings and to stamp the wounded thing under foot. My discovery...

Tachytes' cells belongs to the Praying Mantis; and the Grey Mantis occupies second place. The Empusa, who is comparatively rare on the brushwood in the neighbourhood, is also ra...

Were strength to take precedence over the other zoological attributes, the Scoliae would hold a predominant place in the front rank of the Wasps. Some of them may be compared in...

Weevils and sometimes one of twelve or even more. My notes abound in abstracts of this kind. It is unnecessary for the purpose in hand to quote them all. It will serve our objec...

The Scolia's feeding-period lasts, on the average, for a dozen days or so. By then the victuals are no more than a crumpled bag, a skin emptied of the last scrap of nutriment. A...

The non-armoured victims, vulnerable by the sting over almost their whole body, ordinary caterpillars and Looper caterpillars, Cetonia- and Anoxia-larvae, whose only means of de...

Now that all the facts have been set forth, it is time to collate them. We already know that the Beetle-hunters, the Cerceres (Cf. "The Hunting Wasps": chapters 1 to 3.--Transla...

searching into the mysteries of the egg, will have some esteem for my enquiries into the egg-laying habits of the Osmia (Cf. "Bramble-bees and Others": chapter 4.--Translator's...

After the Ammophilae, the paralysers who multiply their lancet-thrusts to destroy the influence of the various nerve-centres, excepting those of the head, it seemed advisable to...

The family of Wasps whose name I inscribe at the head of this chapter has not hitherto, so far as I know, made much noise in the world. Its annals are limited to methodical clas...

To rear a caterpillar-eater on a skewerful of Spiders is a very innocent thing, unlikely to compromise the security of the State; it is also a very childish thing, as I hasten t...

Considered in respect of quality, the food has just disclosed our profound ignorance of the origins of instinct. Success falls to the blusterers, to the imperturbable dogmatists...

they not subject, irrespective of sex! There are some--and they are numerous--whose dimensions fall to a half, a third, a quarter of the regular dimensions. Among these dwarfs,...

Snail-shells. The second harbours the Burnt Zonitis (Z. proeusta (Cf. "The Glow-worm and Other Beetles": chapter 6.--Translator's Note.)). Amply nourished this Meloe then acquir...

the Insect," an illustrated volume of extracts translated by myself and published by Messrs. Adam and Charles Black (in America by the Macmillan Co.), and Chapter 10 in a simila...

My readers may differ in appraising the comparative value of the trifling discoveries which entomology owes to my labours. The geologist, the recorder of forms, will prefer the...