leads us astray. Why is speed mentioned in this connection? Why a label
which prepares the mind for an exceptional velocity and announces a race of
peerless coursers? Nimble diggers of burrows and eager hunters the Tachytes
are, to be sure, but they are no better than a host of rivals. Not the
Sphex, nor the Ammophila, nor the Bembex, nor many another would admit
herself beaten in either flying or running. At the nesting-season, all this
tiny world of huntresses is filled with astounding activity. The quality of
a speedy worker being common to all, none can boast of it to the exclusion
of the rest.

Had I had a vote when the Tachytes was christened, I should have suggested
a short, harmonious, well-sounding name, meaning nothing else than the
thing meant. What better, for example, than the term Sphex? The ear is
satisfied and the mind is not corrupted by a prejudice, a source of error
to the beginner. I have not nearly as much liking for Ammophila, which
represents as a lover of the sands an animal whose establishments call for
compact soil. In short, if I had been forced, at all costs, to concoct a
barbarous appellation out of Latin or Greek in order to recall the
creature's leading characteristic, I should have attempted to say, a
passionate lover of the Locust.

Love of the Locust, in the broader sense of the Orthopteron, an exclusive,
intolerant love, handed down from mother to daughter with a fidelity which
the centuries fail to impair, this, yes, this indeed depicts the Tachytes
with greater accuracy than a name smacking of the race-course. The
Englishman has his roast-beef; the German his sauerkraut; the Russian his
caviare; the Neapolitan his macaroni; the Piedmontese his polenta; the man
of Carpentras his tian. The Tachytes has her Locust. Her national dish is
also that of the Sphex, with whom I boldly associate her. The methodical
classifier, who works in cemeteries and seems to fly the living cities,