Sphex

Review: Good planetary exploration story as Huyghen and Roane seek out any potential survivors of the Colonial station which, it is suspected, has been done in by the ferocious indigenous life forms known as the Sphex.

REVIEW: The Good Old Stuff edited by Gardner Dozois 2006

The young plasterer Sphex is very fat on coming out of its clay house, and a good relish for food.

The Last Journals of David Livingstone from 1865 to His Death Ed 1874

Without succeeding in my final aim, for reasons which I have just explained, I have seen the Two-banded Scolia feasting greedily on the grub of the Oryctes, which was substituted for that of the Cetonia, and putting up with an Ephippiger taken from the burrow of the Sphex; I have been present at the repast of three Hairy Ammophilae accepting with an excellent appetite the Cricket that replaced their caterpillar.

More Hunting Wasps Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

Before the burrows of _Cerceris tuberculus_ and other devourers of the weevil, and before that of the yellow-winged Sphex, the slayer of crickets, there is plenty of distraction, owing to the busy movements of the community.

Social Life in the Insect World Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

By your experiments, from age to age, to have discovered variety in diet; to have practised it, to the great advantage of your race, and to end up with uniformity, the cause of decadence; to have known the excellent and to repudiate it for the middling: oh, my Sphex-wasps, it would be stupid if the theory of evolution were correct!

More Hunting Wasps Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

Her national dish is also that of the Sphex, with whom I boldly associate her.

More Hunting Wasps Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

The digestive apparatus, in particular, retains in full, or at least in part, its normal energies, as is proved by the frequent dejections of paralysed victims so long as the intestine is not emptied; a fact notably exemplified by the victims of the Sphex family; helpless creatures which I have before now kept alive for forty days with the aid of a little sugared water.

Social Life in the Insect World Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

The band sallies forth and returns with not a single Cricket, but numbers of Ephippigers, for which I asked the day before yesterday and which I no longer need, my Languedocian Sphex being dead.

More Hunting Wasps Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

The Scarabæus, the Sphex, the Necrophorus, and other insects which prepare and preserve alimentary provision for their families, are all of a narrowly limited fertility, because the balls of dung, the dead or paralysed insects, or the buried corpses of animals on which their offspring are nourished are provided only at the cost of laborious efforts.

Social Life in the Insect World Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

As usual, I install my three Ephippigers in a glass jar, on a bed of mould; I remove the egg of the Sphex and on each victim, after slightly incising the skin of the belly, I place a young Scolia-grub.

More Hunting Wasps Jean-Henri Fabre 1869