the various predatory species dealt with their victims.  In the case of Philanthus I made use of the improvised cage already described; and Philanthus it was who furnished me with my first data on the subject.  She responded to my hopes with such energy that I thought myself in possession of an unequalled method of observation, by means of which I could witness again and again, to satiety even, incidents of a kind so difficult to surprise in a state of nature.  Alas! the early days of my acquaintance with Philanthus promised me more than the future had in store for me!  Not to anticipate, however, let us place under the bell-glass the hunter and the game.  I recommend the experiment to whomsoever would witness the perfection with which the predatory Hymenoptera use their stings.  The result is not in doubt and the waiting is short; the moment the prey is perceived in an attitude favourable to her designs, the bandit rushes at it, and all is over.  In detail, the tragedy develops as follows: 

I place under a bell-glass a Philanthus and two or three domestic bees.  The prisoners climb the glass walls, on the more strongly lighted side; they ascend, descend, and seek to escape; the polished, vertical surface is for them quite easy to walk upon.  They presently quiet down, and the brigand begins to notice her surroundings.  The antennae point forward, seeking information; the hinder legs are drawn up with a slight trembling, as of greed and rapacity, in the thighs; the head turns to the right and the left, and follows the evolutions of the bees against the glass.  The posture of the scoundrelly insect is strikingly expressive; one reads in it the brutal desires of a creature in ambush, the cunning patience that postpones attack.  The choice is made, and Philanthus throws herself upon her victim.

Turn by turn tumbled and tumbling, the two insects roll over and over.  But the struggle soon quiets down, and the assassin commences to plunder her prize.  I have seen her adopt two methods.  In the first, more usual than the other, the bee is lying on the ground, upon its back, and Philanthus, mouth to mouth and abdomen to abdomen, clasps it with her six legs, while she seizes its neck in her mandibles.  The abdomen is then curved forward and gropes for a moment for the desired spot in the upper part of the thorax, which it finally reaches.  The sting plunges into the victim, remains in the wound for a moment, and all is over.  Without loosing the victim, which is still tightly clasped, the murderer restores her abdomen to the normal position and holds it pressed against that of the bee.

By the second method Philanthus operates standing upright.  Resting on the hinder feet and the extremity of the folded wings, she rises proudly to a vertical position, holding the bee facing her by her four anterior claws.  In order to get the bee into the proper position for the final stroke, she swings the poor creature round and back again with the careless roughness of a child dandling a doll.  Her pose is magnificent, solidly based upon her sustaining tripod, the two posterior thighs and the end of the wings, she flexes the abdomen forwards and upwards, and, as before, stings the bee in the upper part of the thorax.  The originality of her pose at the moment of striking surpasses anything I have ever witnessed.