I have discussed elsewhere the stings administered by the Wasps to their prey. Now chemistry comes and puts a spoke in the wheel of our arguments, telling us that the poison of the Bees is not the same as that of the Wasps. The Bees' is complex and formed of two elements, acid and alkaline. The Wasps' possess only the acid element; and it is to this very acidity and not to the 'so-called' skill of the operators that the preservation of the provisions is due. (The author's numerous essays on the Wasps will form the contents of later works. In the meantime, cf. "Insect Life," by J.H. Fabre, translated by the author of "Mademoiselle Mori": chapters 4 to 12, and 14 to 18;and "The Life and Love of the Insect," by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 11, 12 and 17.--Translator's Note.)
Admitting that there is a difference in the nature of the venom, Ifail to see that this has any bearing on the problem in hand. I can inoculate with various liquids--acids, weak nitric acid, alkalis, ammonia, neutral bodies, spirits of wine, essence of turpentine--and obtain conditions similar to those of the victims of the predatory insects, that is to say, inertia with the persistence of a dull vitality betrayed by the movements of the mouth-parts and antennae. Iam not, of course, invariably successful, for there is neither delicacy nor precision in my poisoned needle and the wound which it makes does not bear comparison with the tiny puncture of the unerring natural sting; but, after all, it is repeated often enough to put the object of my experiment beyond doubt. I should add that, to achieve success, we must have a subject with a concentrated ganglionic column, such as the Weevil, the Buprestis, the Dung-beetle and others. Paralysis is then obtained with but a single prick, made at the point which the Cerceris has revealed to us, the point at which the corselet joins the rest of the thorax. In that case, the least possible quantity of the acrid liquid is instilled, a quantity too small to endanger the patient's life. With scattered nervous centres, each requiring a separate operation, this method is impracticable:
the victim would die of the excess of corrosive fluid. I am quite ashamed to have to recall these old experiments. Had they been resumed and carried on by others of greater authority than I, we should have escaped the objections of chemistry.
When light is so easy to obtain, why go in search of scientific obscurity? Why talk of acid or alkaline reactions, which prove nothing, when it is so simple to have recourse to facts, which prove everything? Before declaring that the hunting insects' poison has preservative properties merely because of its acid qualities, it would have been well to enquire if the sting of a Bee, with its acid and its alkali, could not perchance produce the same effects as that of the paralyser, whose skill is categorically denied. The chemists never gave this a thought. Simplicity is not always welcome in our laboratories. It is my duty to repair that little omission. I propose to enquire if the poison of the Bee, the chief of the Apidae, is suitable for a surgery that paralyses without killing.
The enquiry bristles with difficulties, though this is no reason for abandoning it. First and foremost, I cannot possibly operate with the Bee just as I catch her. Time after time I make the attempt, without once succeeding; and patience becomes exhausted. The sting has to penetrate at a definite point, exactly where the Wasp's sting would have entered. My intractable captive tosses about angrily and stings at random, never where I wish. My fingers get hurt even oftener than the patient. I have only one means of gaining a little control over the indomitable dart; and that is to cut off the Bee's abdomen with my scissors, to seize the stump instantly with a fine forceps and to apply the tip at the spot where the sting is to enter.
Everybody knows that the Bee's abdomen needs no orders from the head to go on drawing its weapon for a few instants longer and to avenge the deceased before being itself overcome with death's inertia. This vindictive persistency serves me to perfection. There is another circumstance in my favour: the barbed sting remains where it is, which enables me to ascertain the exact spot pierced. A needle withdrawn as soon as inserted would leave me doubtful. I can also, when the transparency of the tissues permits, perceive the direction of the weapon, whether perpendicular and favourable to my plans, or slanting and therefore valueless. Those are the advantages.
The disadvantages are these: the amputated abdomen, though more tractable than the entire Bee, is still far from satisfying my wishes. It gives capricious starts and unexpected pricks. I want it to sting here. No, it balks my forceps and goes and stings elsewhere:
not very far away, I admit; but it takes so little to miss the nerve-centre which we wish to get at. I want it to go in perpendicularly.
No, in the great majority of cases it enters obliquely and passes only through the epidermis. This is enough to show how many failures are needed to make one success.
Nor is this all. I shall be telling nobody anything new when I recall the fact that the Bee's sting is very painful. That of the hunting insects, on the contrary, is in most cases insignificant. My skin, which is no less sensitive than another's, pays no attention to it: Ihandle Sphex, Ammophilae and Scoliae without heeding their lancet-pricks. I have said this before; I remind the reader of it because of the matter in hand. In the absence of well-known chemical or other properties, we have really but one means of comparing the two respective poisons; and that is the amount of pain produced. All the rest is mystery. Besides, no poison, not even that of the Rattlesnake, has hitherto revealed the cause of its dread effects.
