The discovery of a new dish, said Brillat-Savarin, is of greater importance to humanity than the discovery of a new planet. The aphorism is nearer to the truth than it appears to be in its humorous form. Certainly the man who was the first to think of crushing wheat, kneading flour and cooking the paste between two hot stones was more deserving than the discoverer of the two-hundredth asteroid. The invention of the potato is certainly as valuable as that of Neptune, glorious as the latter was. All that increases our alimentary resources is a discovery of the first merit. And what is true of man cannot be other than true of animals. The world belongs to the stomach which is independent of specialities. This truth is of the kind that has only to be stated to be proved.
Let us now return to our insects. If I am to believe the evolutionists, the various game-hunting Wasps are descended from a small number of types, which are themselves derived, by an incalculable number of concatenations, from a few amoebae, a few monera and lastly from the first clot of protoplasm which was casually condensed. Let us not go back as far as that;let us not plunge into the fogs where illusion and error too easily find a lurking-place. Let us consider a subject with exact limits to it; this is the only way to understand one another.
The Sphegidae are descended from a single type, which itself was already a highly-developed descendant and, like its successors, fed its family on prey. The close similarity in form, in colouring and, above all, in habits seem to refer the Tachytes to the same origin. This is ample; let us be satisfied with it. And now please tell me, what did this prototype of the Sphegidae hunt? Was its diet varied or uniform? If we cannot decide, let us examine the two cases.
The diet was varied. I heartily congratulate the first born of the Sphex-wasps. She enjoyed the most favourable conditions for leaving a prosperous offspring. Accommodating herself to any kind of prey not disproportionate to her strength, she avoided the dearth of a given species of game at this or that time and in this or that place; she always found the wherewithal to endow her family magnificently, they being, for that matter, fairly indifferent to the nature of the victuals, provided that these consisted of fresh insect-flesh, as the tastes of their cousins many times removed prove to this day. This matriarch of the Sphex clan bore within herself the best chances of assuring victory to her offspring in that pitiless fight for existence which eliminates the weakly and incapable and allows none but the strong and industrious to survive; she possessed an aptitude of great value which atavism could not fail to hand down and which her descendants, who are greatly interested in preserving this magnificent inheritance, must have permanently adopted and even accentuated from one generation to the next, from one branch, one offshoot, to another.
