Note 11 — Chapter IV · THE AGENIÆ; THE PELOPÆUS’ VICTUALS

Imagine, on the other hand, a single item, big enough to furnish the whole banquet; the conditions would become detestable. Nibbled here and there, the generous morsel, with its many wounds, would become a fatal mess of putrescence long before it was finished; it would poison the grub with the serum resulting from the wounds. A dish of this kind, single and sumptuous, demands, as a preliminary, the maintenance of organic life, together with the abolition of all movement, in a word, paralysis. It also demands, on the consumer’s part, a special art of eating, an art that respects the more essential and attacks the less essential by degrees, as the Scoliæ and Spheges11 have shown us. For reasons which escape me, the Pelopæus is unacquainted with the paralysers’ art, nor does her larva know how a bulky piece of game may be consumed without danger. She is therefore very happily inspired when she provides her family with a large number of small game. The restricted capacity of the store-houses is not the main motive that dictates her choice: there would be nothing to deter the potter from making bigger pickle-jars, were there any advantage to be gained. The preservation of dead victuals is of the foremost consequence; and, to achieve it within the brief limits of the feeding-period, the huntress fills her bag with none but the smaller Spiders.