Note 2 — Chapter vii · ADVANCED THEORIES

But let us pass on and examine the little that is known about the hunting methods of the foreign Sphex-wasps. I open Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau’s2 Natural History of Hymenoptera and find that, on the other side of the Mediterranean, in our Algerian provinces, the Yellow-winged Sphex and the White-edged Sphex retain the same habits that characterize them here. They capture Orthoptera in the land of palm-trees even as they do in the land of olive-trees. Though separated from the others by the vast width of the sea, the hunting compatriots of the Kabyles and the Berbers pursue the same game as their kindred in Provence. I also see that a fourth species, the African Sphex (S. afra), is the scourge of the Locusts in the neighbourhood of Oran. Lastly, I remember reading, I forget where, of a fifth species which also wages war on Locusts in the steppes near the Caspian. Thus, on the borders of the Mediterranean, we have five different species of Sphex, whose larvæ all live on a diet of Orthoptera.