substitute a Sphex for a Common Wasp? Great was my perplexity, in the
face of this evidence! A Sphex capturing a Fly was an impossibility;
and I blamed the British scientist accordingly. But what insect was it
that Erasmus Darwin saw? Calling logic to my aid, I declared that it
was a Wasp; and I could not have hit the mark more truly. Charles
Darwin, in fact, informed me afterwards that his grandfather wrote 'a
Wasp' in his "Zoonomia." Though the correction did credit to my
intelligence, I none the less deeply regretted my mistake, for I had
uttered suspicions of the observer's powers of discernment, unjust
suspicions which the translator's inaccuracy led me into entertaining.
May this note serve to mitigate the harshness of the strictures
provoked by my overtaxed credulity! I do not scruple to attack ideas
which I consider false; but Heaven forfend that I should ever attack
those who uphold them!--Author's Note.)

But does this concatenation of ideas, rudimentary though it be, really
take place within the insect's brain? I am convinced of the contrary;
and my proofs are unanswerable. In the first volume of these
"Souvenirs" (Cf. "Insect Life": chapter 9.--Translator's Note.), I
demonstrated by experiment that Erasmus Darwin's Wasp was but obeying
her instinct, which is to cut up the captured game and to keep only
the most nourishing part, the thorax. Whether the day be perfectly
calm or whether the wind blow, whether she be in the shelter of a
dense thicket or in the open, I see the Wasp proceed to separate the
succulent from the tough; I see her reject the legs, the wings, the
head and the abdomen, retaining only the breast as pap for her larvae.
Then what value has this dissection as an argument in favour of the
insect's reasoning-powers when the wind blows? It has no value at all,
for it would take place just the same in absolutely calm weather.
Erasmus Darwin jumped too quickly to his conclusion, which was the