第25章 THE PROBLEM OF THE SCOLIAE(1)

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.--Translator's Note.), prey exclusively on the Weevils and the Buprestes, that is, on the families whose nervous system presents a degree of concentration which may be compared with that of the Scolia's victims. Those predatory insects, working in the open air, are exempt from the difficulties which their emulators, working underground, have to overcome. Their movements are free and are directed by the sense of sight; but their surgery is confronted in another respect with a most arduous problem.

The victim, a Beetle, is covered at all points with a suit of armour which the sting is unable to penetrate. The joints alone will allow the poisoned lancet to pass. Those of the legs do not in any way comply with the conditions imposed: the result of stinging them would be merely a partial disorder which far from subduing the insect, would render it more dangerous by irritating it yet further. A sting in the joint of the neck is not admissible: it would injure the cervical ganglia and lead to death, followed by putrefaction. There remains only the joint between the corselet and the abdomen.

The sting, in entering here, has to abolish all movement with a single stab, for any movement would imperil the rearing of the larva. The success of the paralysis, therefore, demands that the motor ganglia, at least the three thoracic ganglia, shall be packed in close contact opposite this point. This determines the selection of Weevils and Buprestes, both of which are so strongly armoured.

But where the prey has only a soft skin, incapable of stopping the sting, the concentrated nervous system is no longer necessary, for the operator, versed in the anatomical secrets of her victim, knows to perfection where the centres of innervation lie; and she wounds them one after another, if need be from the first to the last. Thus do the Ammophilae go to work when dealing with their caterpillars and the Sphex-wasps when dealing with their Locusts, Ephippigers and Crickets.

With the Scoliae we come once again to a soft prey, with a skin penetrable by the sting no matter where it be attacked. Will the tactics of the caterpillar-hunters, who stab and stab again, be repeated here? No, for the difficulty of movement under ground prohibits so complicated an operation.

Only the tactics of the paralysers of armour-clad insects are practicable now, for, since there is but one thrust of the dagger, the feat of surgery is reduced to its simplest terms, a necessary consequence of the difficulties of an underground operation. The Scoliae, then, whose destiny it is to hunt and paralyse under the soil the victuals for their family, require a prey made highly vulnerable by the close assemblage of the nerve-centres, as are the Weevils and Buprestes of the Cerceres; and this is why it has fallen to their lot to share among them the larvae of the Scarabaeidae.

Before they obtained their allotted portion, so closely restricted and so judiciously selected; before they discovered the precise and almost mathematical point at which the sting must enter to produce a sudden and a lasting immobility; before they learnt how to consume, without incurring the risk of putrefaction, so corpulent a prey: in brief, before they combined these three conditions of success, what did the Scoliae do?

The Darwinian school will reply that they were hesitating, essaying, experimenting. A long series of blind gropings eventually hit upon the most favourable combination, a combination henceforth to be perpetuated by hereditary transmission. The skilful co-ordination between the end and the means was originally the result of an accident.

Chance! A convenient refuge! I shrug my shoulders when I hear it invoked to explain the genesis of an instinct so complex as that of the Scoliae. In the beginning, you say, the creature gropes and feels its way; there is nothing settled about its preferences. To feed its carnivorous larvae it levies tribute on every species of game which is not too much for the huntress' power or the nurseling's appetite; its descendants try now this, now that, now something else, at random, until the accumulated centuries lead to the selection which best suits the race. Then habit grows fixed and becomes instinct.

Very well. Let us agree that the Scolia of antiquity sought a different prey from that adopted by the modern huntress. If the family throve upon a diet now discontinued, we fail to see that the descendants had any reason to change it: animals have not the gastronomic fancies of an epicure whom satiety makes difficult to please. Because the race did well upon this fare, it became habitual; and instinct became differently fixed from what it is to-day. If, on the other hand, the original food was unsuitable, the existence of the family was jeopardized; and any attempt at future improvement became impossible, because an unhappily inspired mother would leave no heirs.

To escape falling into this twofold trap, the theorists will reply that the Scoliae are descended from a precursor, an indeterminate creature, of changeable habits and changing form, modifying itself in accordance with its environment and with the regional and climatic conditions and branching out into races each of which has become a species with the attributes which distinguish it to-day. The precursor is the deus ex machina of evolution.

When the difficulty becomes altogether too importunate, quick, a precursor, to fill up the gaps, quick, an imaginary creature, the nebulous plaything of the mind! This is seeking to lighten the darkness with a still deeper obscurity; to illumine the day by piling cloud upon cloud. Precursors are easier to find than sound arguments. Nevertheless, let us put the precursor of the Scoliae to the test.

What did she do? Being capable of everything, she did a bit of everything.