most costly acquisition. What strikes me most is the sudden recoil after
the first thrust of the sting. The Hairy Ammophila, operating on her
caterpillar, likewise recoils, but progressively, from one segment to the
next. Her deliberate surgery might receive a quasi-explanation if we
ascribe it to a certain uniformity. With the Tachytes and the Mantis this
paltry argument escapes us. Here are no lancet-pricks regularly
distributed; on the contrary, the operating-method betrays a lack of
symmetry which would be inconceivable, if the organization of the patient
did not serve as a guide. The Tachytes therefore knows where her prey's
nerve-centres lie; or, to speak more correctly, she behaves as though she
knew.

This science which is unconscious of itself has not been acquired, by her
and by her race, through experiments perfected from age to age and habits
transmitted from one generation to the next. It is impossible, I am
prepared to declare a hundred times, a thousand times over, it is
absolutely impossible to experiment and to learn an art when you are lost
if you do not succeed at the first attempt. Don't talk to me of atavism, of
small successes increasing by inheritance, when the novice, if he
misdirected his weapon, would be crushed in the trap of the two saws and
fall a prey to the savage Mantis! The peaceable Locust, if missed, protests
against the attack with a few kicks; the carnivorous Mantis, who is in the
habit of feasting on Wasps far more powerful than the Tachytes, would
protest by eating the bungler; the game would devour the hunter, an
excellent catch. Mantis-paralysing is a most perilous trade and admits of
no half-successes; you have to excel in it from the first, under pain of
death. No, the surgical art of the Tachytes is not an acquired art. Whence
then does it come, if not from the universal knowledge in which all things
move and have their being!