the successive mouthfuls? How has a miserable grub learnt what our
knowledge cannot tell us? By habit, the Darwinians will reply, who see in
instinct an acquired habit.

Before deciding this serious matter, I will ask you to reflect that the
first Wasp, of whatever kind, that thought of feeding her progeny on a
Cetonia-grub or on any other large piece of game demanding long
preservation could necessarily have left no descendants unless the art of
consuming food without causing putrescence had been practised, with all its
scrupulous caution, from the first generation onwards. Having as yet learnt
nothing by habit or by atavistic transmission, since it was making a first
beginning, the nurseling would bite into its provender at random. It would
be starving, it would have no respect for its prey. It would carve its
joint at random; and we have just seen the fatal consequence of an ill-
directed bite. It would perish--I have just proved this in the most
positive manner--it would perish, poisoned by its victim, already dead and
putrid.

To prosper, it would have, although a novice, to know what was permitted
and what forbidden in ransacking the creature's entrails; nor would it be
enough for the larva to be approximately in possession of this difficult
secret: it would be indispensable that it should possess the secret
completely, for a single bite, if delivered before the right moment, would
inevitably involve its own demise. The Scoliae of my experiments are not
novices, far from it: they are the descendants of carvers that have
practised their art since Scoliae first came into the world; nevertheless
they all perish from the decomposition of the rations supplied, when I try
to feed them on Ephippigers paralysed by the Sphex. Very expert in the
method of attacking the Cetonia, they do not know how to set about the
business of discreetly consuming a species of game new to them. All that