The Anathema Tachytes (T. anathema, VAN DER LIND), the giant of her race,
almost as large as the Languedocian Sphex and, like her, decorated with a
red scarf round the base of the abdomen, is rarer than any of her
congeners. I have come upon her only some four or five times, as an
isolated individual and always in circumstances which will tell us of the
nature of her game with a probability that comes very near to certainty.
She hunts underground, like the Scoliae. In September I see her go down
into the soil, which has been loosened by a recent light shower; the
movement of the earth turned over keeps me informed of her subterranean
progress. She is like the Mole, ploughing through a meadow in pursuit of
his White Worm. She comes out farther on, nearly a yard from the spot at
which she went in. This long journey underground has taken her only a few
minutes.

Is this due to extraordinary powers of excavation on her part? By no means:
the Anathema Tachytes is an energetic tunneller, no doubt, but, after all,
is incapable of performing so great a labour in so short a time. If the
underground worker is so swift in her progress, it is because the track
followed has already been covered by another. The trail is ready prepared.
We will describe it, for it is clearly defined before the intervention of
the Wasp.

On the surface of the ground, for a length of two paces at most, runs a
sinuous line, a beading of crumbled soil, roughly the width of my finger.
>From this line of ramifications (others) shoot out to left and right, much
shorter and irregularly distributed. One need not be a great entomological
scholar to recognize, at the first glance, in these pads of raised earth,
the trail of a Mole-cricket, the Mole among insects. It is the Mole-cricket
who, seeking for a root to suit her, has excavated the winding tunnel, with
investigation-galleries grafted to either side of the main road. The