furnish matter for discussion. In the present case, the distance no
longer exists: we have to do with two insects very near akin, two
Hymenoptera. Why, if they issue from the same mould, has one a sense
which the other has not, an additional sense, constituting a much more
overpowering factor than the structural details? I will wait until the
evolutionists condescend to give me a valid reason.

To return to this memory for places whose tenacity and fidelity I have
just recognized: to what degree does it consent to retain impressions?
Does the Amazon require repeated journeys in order to learn her
geography, or is a single expedition enough for her? Are the line
followed and the places visited engraved on her memory from the first?
The Red Ant does not lend herself to the tests that might furnish the
reply: the experimenter is unable to decide whether the path followed
by the expeditionary column is being covered for the first time, nor
is it in his power to compel the legion to adopt this or that
different road. When the Amazons go out to plunder the Ant-hills, they
take the direction which they please; and we are not allowed to
interfere with their march. Let us turn to other Hymenoptera for
information.

I select the Pompili, whose habits we shall study in detail in a later
chapter. (For the Wasp known as the Pompilus, or Ringed Calicurgus,
cf. "The Life and Love of the Insect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated
by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 12.--Translator's Note.) They
are hunters of Spiders and diggers of burrows. The game, the food of
the coming larva, is first caught and paralysed; the home is excavated
afterwards. As the heavy prey would be a grave encumbrance to the Wasp
in search of a convenient site, the Spider is placed high up, on a
tuft of grass or brushwood, out of the reach of marauders, especially