eleventh.

After ascertaining these facts, I remembered Swammerdam's investigations
into the grub of the Monoceros, our Oryctes nasicornis. (Jan Swammerdam
(1637-1680), the Dutch naturalist and anatomist.--Translator's Note.) I
chanced to possess an abridgement of the "Biblia naturae," the masterly
work of the father of insect anatomy. I consulted the venerable volume. It
informed me that the learned Dutchman had been struck, long before I was,
by an anatomical peculiarity similar to that which the larvae of the
Cetoniae and Anoxiae had shown me in their nerve-centres. Having observed
in the Silk-worm a nervous system formed of ganglia distinct one from the
other, he was quite surprised to find that, in the grub of the Oryctes, the
same system was concentrated into a short chain of ganglia in
juxtaposition. His was the surprise of the anatomist who, studying the
organ qua organ, sees for the first time an unusual conformation. Mine was
of a different nature: I was amazed to see the precision with which the
paralysis of the victim sacrificed by the Scolia, a paralysis so profound
in spite of the difficulties of an underground operation, had guided my
forecast as to structure when, anticipating the dissection, I declared in
favour of an exceptional concentration of the nervous system. Physiology
perceived what anatomy had not yet revealed, at all events to my eyes, for
since then, on dipping into my books, I have learnt that these anatomical
peculiarities, which were then so new to me, are now within the domain of
current science. We know that, in the Scarabaeidae, both the larva and the
perfect insect are endowed with a concentrated nervous system.

The Garden Scolia attacks Oryctes nasicornis; the Two-banded Scolia the
Cetonia; the Interrupted Scolia the Anoxia. All three operate below ground,
under the most unfavourable conditions; and all three have for their victim
a larva of one of the Scarabaeidae, which, thanks to the exceptional