Puslapio vaizdai
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The Hunting Wasp

By HENRI FABRE

"Who that has diverted himself, however little, with the study of insects does not know the Pompili? Against old walls, at the foot of the banks beside unfrequented foot-paths, in the stubble after the harvest, in the tangles of dry grass, wherever the spider spreads her nets, who has not seen them busily at work?"

OST of the insects and larvæ that form the prey of the hunting wasps, who store them away as food for their young, are inoffensive victims, like the silly sheep of our slaughter-houses; they allow themselves to be operated upon by the paralyzer, submitting stupidly, without offering much resistance. The mandibles gape, the legs kick and protest, the body wriggles and twists, and that is all; they have no weapons capable of contending with the assassin's dagger.

I wanted to see the huntress grappling with an imposing adversary, one as crafty as herself, an expert layer of ambushes, and, like her, bearing a poisoned dirk. I wanted to see the bandit armed with the stiletto confronted by another bandit equally familiar with the use of that weapon. Is such a duel possible? Yes, it is possible and even common. On the one side we have the Pompili, the protagonists who are always victorious; on the other hand the spiders, the protagonists who are always overthrown.

Who that has diverted himself, however little, with the study of insects does not know the Pompili? Against old walls, at the foot of the banks beside unfrequented foot-paths, in the stubble after the harvest, in the tangles of dry grass, wherever the spider spreads her nets, who has not seen them busily at work, now running hither and thither, at random, their wings raised and quivering above their backs, now moving from place to place in flights long or short? They are hunting for a quarry which might easily turn the tables and

itself prey upon the trapper lying in wait for it.

The Pompili feed their larvæ solely on spiders, and the spiders feed on any insect commensurate with their size that is caught in their nets. While the first possess a sting, the second have two poisoned fangs. Often their strength is equally matched; indeed, the advantage is not seldom on the spider's side. The wasp has her ruses of war, her cunningly premeditated strokes; the spider has her wiles and her set traps. The first has the advantage of great rapidity of movement, while the second is able to rely upon her perfidious web; the one has a sting which contrives to penetrate the exact point to cause paralysis; the other has fangs which bite the back of the neck and deal sudden death. We find the paralyzer on the one hand, and the slaughterer on the other. Which of the two will become the other's prey?

If we consider only the relative strength of the adversaries, the power of their weapons, the virulence of their poisons, and their different modes of action, the scale would very often be weighted in favor of the spider. Since the Pompilus always emerges victorious from this contest, which appears to be full of peril for her, she must have a special method, of which I would fain learn the secret.

In our part of the country the most powerful and courageous spider huntress is the Ringed Pompilus (Calicurgus annulatus, FABR.), clad in black and yellow. She stands high on her legs, and her wings have black tips, the rest being yellow, as though exposed to smoke,

like a bloater. She is rare; I see three or four of her in the course of the year, and I never fail to halt in the presence of the proud creature, rapidly striding through the dust of the fields when the dog-days arrive. Its audacious air, its uncouth gait, its warlike bearing, long made me suspect that to obtain its prey it had to make some impossible, terrible, unspeakable capture; and my guess was correct. By dint of waiting and watching I beheld that victim; I saw it in the huntress's mandibles. It

is the Black-bellied Tarantula, the terrible spider who slays a carpenter-bee or a bumblebee outright with one stroke of her weapon, the spider who kills a sparrow or. a mole, the formidable creature whose bite would perhaps not be without danger to ourselves. Yes, this is the bill of fare which the proud Pompilus provides for her larva.

This spectacle, one of the most striking with which the hunting wasps have ever provided me, has as yet been offered to my eyes but once, and that was in the paddock adjoining my rural home. I can still see the intrepid poacher dragging by the leg, at the foot of a wall, the monstrous prize which she had just secured, doubtless at no great distance. At the base of the wall was a hole, an accidental chink between some of the stones. The wasp inspected the cavern, not for the first time; she had already reconnoitered it, and the premises had satisfied her. The prey, deprived of the power of movement, was waiting somewhere, I know not where; and the huntress had gone back to fetch it and store it away. It was at this moment that I met her. The Pompilus gave a last glance at the cave, removed a few small fragments of loose mortar, and with that her preparations were completed. The Lycosa1 was introduced, dragged along, belly upward, by one leg. I did not interfere. Presently, the wasp reappeared on the surface and carelessly pushed in front of the hole the bits of mortar which she had just extracted from it; then she flew away. It was all over, the egg was laid, the insect had finished for better or for worse, and I was able to proceed with my examination of the burrow and its contents.

The Pompilus has done no digging. It is really an accidental hole, with spacious, winding passages, the result of the mason's negligence and not of the wasp's industry. The closing of the cavity is quite as rough and ready. A few crumbs of mortar heaped up before the doorway form a barricade rather than a door. A mighty hunter makes a poor architect. The tarantula's murderess does not know how to dig a cell for her larva, she does not know how to fill up the entrance by sweeping dust into it. The first hole encountered at the foot of a wall contents her, provided that it be roomy enough; a little heap of rubbish will do for a door. Nothing could be more expeditious.

I withdraw the game from the hole. The egg is stuck to the spider, near the beginning of the belly. A clumsy movement on my part makes it fall off at the moment of extraction. It is all over: the thing will not hatch; I shall not be able to observe the development of the larva. The tarantula lies motionless, as flexible as in life, with not a trace of a wound. In short, we have here life without movement. From time to time the tips of the tarsi quiver a little, and that is all. Accustomed of old to these deceptive corpses, I can see in my mind's eye what has happened: the spider has been stung in the region of the thorax, no doubt once only, in view of the concentration of her nervous system. I place the victim in a box, in which it retains all the pliancy and all the freshness of life from the second of August to the twentieth of September; that is to say, seven weeks. These miracles are familiar to us; there is no need to linger over them here.

The most important matter has escaped me. What I wanted, what I still want, to see, is the Pompilus engaged in mortal combat with the Lycosa. What a duel, in which the cunning of the one has to overcome the terrible weapons of the other! Does the wasp enter the burrow to surprise the tarantula at the bottom of her lair? Such temerity would be fatal to her. Where the big bumblebee dies an instant death, the audacious visitor would perish the moment she entered. Is not the other

1The spider in question is known indifferently as the Black-bellied Tarantula and the Narbonne Lycosa..

there, facing her, ready to snap at the back of her head, inflicting a wound which would result in sudden death? No, the Pompilus does not enter the spider's parlor, that is obvious. Does she surprise the spider outside her fortress? But the Lycosa is a stay-athome animal; I do not see her straying abroad during the summer. Later, in the autumn, when the Pompili have disappeared, she wanders about; turning Gipsy, she takes the open air with her numerous family, which she carries on her back. Apart from these maternal strolls, she does not appear to me to leave her castle; and the Pompilus, I should think, has no great chance of meeting her outside. The problem, we perceive, is becoming complicated: the huntress cannot make her way into the burrow, where she would risk sudden death; and the spider's sedentary habits make an encounter outside the burrow improbable. Here is a riddle which would be interesting to decipher. Let us endeavor to do so by observing other spider-hunters; analogy will enable us to draw a conclusion.

I have often watched Pompili of every species on their hunting expeditions, but I have never surprised them entering the spider's lodging when the latter is at home. Whether this lodging be a funnel plunging its neck into a hole in some wall, an awning stretched amid the stubble, a tent modeled upon the Arab's, a sheath formed of a few leaves bound together, or a net with a guardroom attached, whenever the owner is indoors, the suspicious Pompilus holds aloof. When the dwelling is vacant, it is another matter; the wasp moves with arrogant ease over those webs, springs, and cables, in which so many other insects would remain ensnared. The silken threads do not seem to have any hold upon her. What is she doing, exploring those empty webs? She is watching to see what is happening on the adjacent webs where the spider is ambushed. The Pompilus therefore feels an insuperable reluctance to make straight for the spider when the latter is at home in the midst of her snares. And she is right a hundred times over. If the tarantula understands the practice of the dagger-thrust in the neck,

which is immediately fatal, the other cannot be unacquainted with it. Woe, then, to the imprudent wasp who presents herself upon the threshold of a spider of approximately equal strength!

Of the various instances which I have collected of this cautious reserve on the spider huntress's part, I shall confine myself to the following, which will be sufficient to prove my point. By joining three leaflets together with silken strands, a spider has built herself a green arbor, a horizontal sheath, open at each end. A questing Pompilus comes upon the scene, finds the game to her liking, and pops in her head at the entrance of the cell. The spider immediately retreats to the other end. The huntress goes round the spider's dwelling and reappears at the other door. Again the spider retreats, returning to the first entrance. The wasp also returns to it, but always by the outside. Scarcely has she done so, when the spider rushes for the opposite opening; and so on for fully a quarter of an hour, both of them coming and going from one end of the cylinder to the other, the spider inside and the Pompilus outside.

The

The quarry was a valuable one, it seems, since the wasp persisted for a long time in her attempts, which were invariably defeated; the huntress had to abandon them, however, baffled by this perpetual running to and fro. Pompilus made off, and the spider, once more on the watch, patiently awaited the heedless midges. What should the wasp have done to capture this muchcoveted game? She should have entered the verdant cylinder, the spider's dwelling, and pursued the spider direct, in her own house, instead of remaining outside, going from one door to the other. With such swiftness and dexterity as hers, it seemed to me impossible that the stroke should fail; for the quarry moved clumsily, a little sidewise, like a crab. I judged it to be an easy matter; the Pompilus thought it highly dangerous. To-day I am of her opinion. If she had entered the leafy tube, the mistress of the house would have operated upon her neck, and the huntress would have become the quarry.

Years passed, and the paralyzer of

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