tiny, dull-white cylinder, about three millimetres long by half a
millimetre wide. (.117 x .019 inch.--Translator's Note.) This is the organ
which the Scolia's sting must attack in order to secure the paralysis of
the whole body, excepting the head, which is provided with special ganglia.
>From it run numbers of filaments which actuate the feet and the powerful
muscular layer which is the creature's essential motor organ. When examined
merely through the pocket-lens, this cylinder appears to be slightly
furrowed transversely, a proof of its complex structure. Under the
microscope, it is seen to be formed by the close juxtaposition, the
welding, end to end, of the ganglia, which can be distinguished one from
the other by a slight intermediate groove. The bulkiest are the first, the
fourth and the tenth, or last; these are all very nearly of equal size. The
rest are barely half or even a third as large as those mentioned.

The Interrupted Scolia experiences the same hunting and surgical
difficulties when she attacks, in the crumbling, sandy soil, the larvae of
the Shaggy Anoxia or of the Morning Anoxia, according to the district; and
these difficulties, if they are to be overcome, demand in the victim a
concentrated nervous system, like the Cetonia's. Such is my logical
conviction before making my examination; such also is the result of direct
observation. When subjected to the scalpel, the larva of the Morning Anoxia
shows me its centres of innervation for the thorax and the abdomen,
gathered into a short cylinder, which, placed very far forward, almost
immediately after the head, does not run back beyond the level of the
second pair of legs. The vulnerable point is thus easily accessible to the
sting, despite the creature's posture of defence, in which it contracts and
coils up. In this cylinder I recognize eleven ganglia, one more than in the
Cetonia. The first three, or thoracic, ganglia are plainly distinguishable
from one another, although they are set very close together; the rest are
all in contact. The largest are the three thoracic ganglia and the