Books: Friendly Sharpshooter

THE HUNTING WASP (240 pp.)—John Crompton—Houghfon Miffin ($3).

Though the safaris it describes mostly take place in bean patches and along garden walls, this is one of the year's best hunting books.

The hunters—or rather, huntresses—are wasps out for big game to feed their young. They shoot only pointblank, not to kill but to paralyze, since the victim is to be sealed into the huntress' lair with her egg, and the larva thrives only on fresh meat. Though only such consecrated bug watchers as France's late great Entomologist Jean Henri Fabre get in on these...