Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1888-10-31

gins another, and only when four cham
bers are made and supplied each with
an egg and food for tho grub when
Matched, does she come out and close
the galleryp
Now what has she done? It will be,
at least, three or four days before the
first egg will hatch, and ten or twelve
days more before the grub has finished
eating the three or four grasshoppers.
But long before this. if the grass
hoppers were dead they would have
become dry and juiceless in a warm
place. and rotten and putrid in q damp
one, SO that the grub could not eat
them. But they are not dead.
Fabre, a French entomologist, who
spent years in studying these insects,
found that after month and q half
these strong grasshoppers are still
fresh and their limbs are flexible. Nay!
for more than fortnight their an
tenn@ and legs may often be seen to
move.
Paralyzed throughout and thrown
into profound Inconsistencies, yet the
prey is living still, so that the larva
from the time when It first comes out
of the egg, till its last meal before it
spins it's cocoon, has fresh and living
meat prepared for its table.
Here is indeed a marvel! and by
initiating it NJ. Fabre found out how it
is done. BY taking metal pen, with
ammonia upon it, making a corrosive
liquid, and pricking the grasshopper
in the three spots chosen by the Sphex
for her sting, he was able to paralyze
the insect as she had done.
For this clever little insect stings OK
actly in the three places where under
the grasshopper's body are gathered
the centers of nerve matter from which
the nerves spring. In this way she
completely disables her victim, while
her stabs are just of the right strength
to paralyze but not to kill. M. Fabre
found that if the operation was care
lessly performed, the insect died, vet
so far as he could discover, no Sphex
ever by mistake kills her prey.
One more fact, and our wonder at the
skill and instinct of these creatures
reaches its height. The Srher Lam
guedocien, which is rather larger than
the yellow-winged Sphex of which we
have been speaking, kills good-sized
locust for her grub, and stores only one
in each cell. Now as this victim is
very large compared to herself she can
not fly with it, 80 she catches it first,
and afterwards excavates her chamber
near. Then she has to drag him into
It by his antennB, and as he is large
and strong, his legs and mandibles still
moving after he is stung are very dan
gerous to her.
Yet probably if she stung him moer
he might die. for this is not how she
gets out of the difficulty. Getting
astride him, she presses his neck till
the joints open. and then with drm
stroke of her mandibles she presses
upon the collar of nerve matter collect
ed round the throat ,-%.
In an instant her prey becomes quiet,
she has. stunned the locust, and pro-
duced the same e feet as blow ON the
brain does to q man, and this lasts for
some time. But it does not kill, nor
even permanently injure the nerve
ganglia, for M. Fabre found that after
ward, when in the cell, the locust had
recovered from the pressure, and his
limbs and mandibles moved as before.
Now we might imagine that all this
movement would be dangerous to the
young and tender grub, and so it would
if the careful mother had not placed
the egg upon the locust's thorax exact
ly where no movement can touch it,
and so when the grub is Matched it eats
at ease upon the spot most paralyzed
until it has gained strength.
Nor is it only the grub which profits
by this arrangement. Much as we
might admire the cleverness of these
sand-wasps in keeping their prey alive,
yet it would be very horrible If we
could suppose that the grasshopper or
the locust were suffering lingering tor
lures. But, on the contrary, the very
parts attacked and paralyzed are the
nerves, the parts that feel, and just as
patient under chloroform has his
nerve-centers for the time deadened,
so that though he may struggle under
the hands of the surgeon yet he knows
nothing of it, SO the grasshopper,
feebly moving his legs, can not be sup
posed to feel the bite of his destroyer,
who begins his meal upon that very
part most strongly paralyzed and as
he feeds destroys still more surely the
power of suffering.
Such is the history Of the meat-pre-
serving sand-wasps, and yet it is not
half told. For the Sphex Is only one
among q whole group Of these insects;