第59章 THE BEE-EATING PHILANTHUS(3)

If the one has learnt by prolonged practice in attack, the other should also have learnt by prolonged practice in defence, for attack and defence possess a like merit in the fight for life. Among the theorists of the day, is there one clear-sighted enough to solve the riddle for us?

If so, I will take the opportunity of putting to him a second problem that puzzles me: the carelessness, nay, more, the stupidity of the Bee in the presence of the Philanthus. You would be inclined to think that the victim of persecution, learning gradually from the misfortunes suffered by her family, would show distress at the ravisher's approach and at least attempt to escape. In my cages I see nothing of the sort. Once the first excitement due to incarceration under the bell-glass or the wire-gauze cover has passed, the Bee seems hardly to trouble about her formidable neighbour. Isee one side by side with the Philanthus on the same honeyed thistle-head:

assassin and future victim are drinking from the same flask. I see some one who comes heedlessly to enquire who that stranger can be, crouching in wait on the table. When the spoiler makes her rush, it is usually at a Bee who meets her half-way, and, so to speak, flings herself into her clutches, either thoughtlessly or out of curiosity. There is no wild terror, no sign of anxiety, no tendency to make off. How comes it that the experience of the ages, that experience which, we are told, teaches the animal so many things, has not taught the Bee the first element of apiarian wisdom: a deep-seated horror of the Philanthus? Can the poor wretch take comfort by relying on her trusty dagger? But she yields to none in her ignorance of fencing; she stabs without method, at random. However, let us watch her at the supreme moment of the killing.

When the ravisher makes play with her sting, the Bee does the same with hers and furiously. I see the needle now moving this way or that way in space, now slipping, violently curved, along the murderess' convex surface.

These sword-thrusts have no serious results. The manner in which the two combatants are at grips has this effect, that the Philanthus' abdomen is inside and the Bee's outside. The latter's sting therefore finds under its point only the dorsal surface of the foe, a convex, slippery surface and so well armoured as to be almost invulnerable. There is here no breach into which the weapon can slip by accident; and so the operation is conducted with absolute surgical safety, notwithstanding the indignant protests of the patient.

After the fatal stroke has been administered, the murderess remains for a long time belly to belly with the dead, for reasons which we shall shortly perceive. There may now be some danger for the Philanthus. The attitude of attack and defence is abandoned; and the ventral surface, more vulnerable than the other, is within reach of the sting. Now the deceased still retains the reflex use of her weapon for a few minutes, as I learnt to my cost. Having taken the Bee too early from the bandit and handling her without suspecting any risk, I received a most downright sting. Then how does the Philanthus, in her long contact with the butchered Bee, manage to protect herself against that lancet, which is bent upon avenging the murder? Is there any chance of a commutation of the death-penalty? Can an accident ever happen in the Bee's favour? Perhaps.

One incident strengthens my faith in this perhaps. I had placed four Bees and as many Eristales under the bell-glass at the same time, with the object of estimating the Philanthus' entomological knowledge in the matter of the distinction of species. Reciprocal quarrels break out in the mixed colony. Suddenly, in the midst of the fray, the killer is killed. She tumbles over on her back, she waves her legs; she is dead. Who struck the blow? It was certainly not the excitable but pacific Drone-fly; it was one of the Bees, who struck home by accident during the thick of the fight.

Where and how? I cannot tell. The incident occurs only once in my notes, but it throws a light upon the question. The Bee is capable of withstanding her adversary; she can then and there slay her would-be slayer with a thrust of the sting. That she does not defend herself to better purpose, when she falls into her enemy's clutches, is due to her ignorance of fencing and not to the weakness of her weapon. And here again arises, more insistently than before, the question which I asked above: how is it that the Philanthus has learnt for offensive what the Bee has not learnt for defensive purposes? I see but one answer to the difficulty: the one knows without having learnt; the other does not know because she is incapable of learning.

Let us now consider the motives that induce the Philanthus to kill her Bee instead of paralysing her. When the crime has been perpetrated, she manipulates her dead victim without letting go of it for a moment, holding its belly pressed against her own six legs. I see her recklessly, very recklessly, rooting with her mandibles in the articulation of the neck, sometimes also in the larger articulation of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs, an articulation of whose delicate membrane she is perfectly well aware, even though, when using her sting, she did not take advantage of this point, which is the most readily accessible of all. I see her rough-handling the Bee's belly, squeezing it against her own abdomen, crushing it in the press. The recklessness of the treatment is striking; it shows that there is no need for keeping up precautions. The Bee is a corpse; and a little hustling here and there will not deteriorate its quality, provided there be no effusion of blood. In point of fact, however rough the handling, I fail to discover the slightest wound.