第58章 THE BEE-EATING PHILANTHUS(2)

To give the poor thing a position suited to receive the dagger-stroke, she turns her round and back again with the rough clumsiness of a child handling its doll. Her pose is magnificent to look at. Solidly planted on her sustaining tripod, the two hinder tarsi and the tips of the wings, she at last crooks her abdomen upwards and again stings the Bee under the chin.

The originality of the Philanthus' posture at the moment of the murder surpasses the anything that I have hitherto seen.

The desire for knowledge in natural history has its cruel side. To learn precisely the point attacked by the sting and to make myself thoroughly acquainted with the horrible talent of the murderess, I have investigated more assassinations under glass than I would dare to confess. Without a single exception, I have always seen the Bee stung in the throat. In the preparations for the final blow, the tip of the abdomen may well come to rest on this or that point of the thorax or abdomen; but it does not stop at any of these, nor is the sting unsheathed, as can readily be ascertained. Indeed, once the contest is opened, the Philanthus becomes so entirely absorbed in her operation that I can remove the cover and follow every vicissitude of the tragedy with my pocket-lens.

After recognizing the invariable position of the wound, I bend back and open the articulation of the head. I see under the Bee's chin a white spot, measuring hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch square, where the horny integuments are lacking and the delicate skin is shown uncovered. It is here, always here, in this tiny defect in the armour, that the sting enters. Why is this spot stabbed rather than another? Can it be the only vulnerable point, which would necessarily determine the thrust of the lancet? Should any one entertain so petty a thought, I advise him to open the articulation of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs. He will there see what I see: the bare skin, quite as fine as under the neck, but covering a much larger surface. The horny breast-plate offers no wider breach. If the Philanthus were guided in her operation solely by the question of vulnerability, it is here certainly that she ought to strike, instead of persistently seeking the narrow slit in the neck. The weapon would not need to hesitate and grope; it would obtain admission into the tissues off-hand. No, the stroke of the lancet is not forced upon it mechanically: the assassin scorns the large defect in the corselet and prefers the place under the chin, for eminently logical reasons which we will now attempt to unravel.

Immediately after the operation I take the Bee from the Philanthus. What strikes me is the sudden inertia of the antennae and the mouth-parts, organs which in the victims of most of the Hunting Wasps continue to move for so long a time. There are here not any of the signs of life to which Ihave been accustomed in my old studies of insect paralysis: the antennary threads waving slowly to and fro, the palpi quivering, the mandibles opening and closing for days, weeks and months on end. At most, the tarsi tremble for a minute or two; that constitutes the whole death-struggle.

Complete immobility ensues. The inference drawn from this sudden inertia is inevitable: the Wasp has stabbed the cervical ganglia. Hence the immediate cessation of movement in all the organs of the head; hence the real instead of the apparent death of the Bee. The Philanthus is a butcher and not a paralyser.

This is one step gained. The murderess chooses the under part of the chin as the point attacked in order to strike the principal nerve-centres, the cephalic ganglia, and thus to do away with life at one blow. When this vital seat is poisoned by the toxin, death is instantaneous. Had the Philanthus' object been simply to effect paralysis, the suppression of locomotor movements, she would have driven her weapon into the flaw in the corselet, as the Cerceres do with the Weevils, who are much more powerfully armoured than the Bee. But her intention is to kill outright, as we shall see presently; she wants a corpse, not a paralytic patient. This being so, we must agree that her operating-method is supremely well-inspired: our human murderers could achieve nothing more thorough or immediate.

We must also agree that her attitude when attacking, an attitude very different from that of the paralysers, is infallible in its death-dealing efficacy. Whether she deliver her thrust lying on the ground or standing erect, she holds the Bee in front of her, breast to breast, head to head.

In this posture all that she need do is to curve her abdomen in order to reach the gap in the neck and plunge the sting with an upward slant into her captive's head. Suppose the two insects to be gripping each other in the reverse attitude, imagine the dirk to slant slightly in the opposite direction; the results would be absolutely different and the sting, driven downwards, would pierce the first thoracic ganglion and produce merely partial paralysis. What skill, to sacrifice a wretched Bee! In what fencing-school was the slayer taught her terrible upward blow under the chin?

If she learnt it, how is it that her victim, such a past mistress in architecture, such an adept in socialistic polity, has so far learnt no corresponding trick to serve in her own defence? She is as powerful as her executioner; like the other, she carries a rapier, an even more formidable one and more painful, at least to my fingers. For centuries and centuries the Philanthus has been storing her away in her cellars; and the poor innocent meekly submits, without being taught by the annual extermination of her race how to deliver herself from the aggressor by a well-aimed thrust. I despair of ever understanding how the assailant has acquired her talent for inflicting sudden death, when the assailed, who is better-armed and quite as strong, wields her dagger anyhow and therefore ineffectively.