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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre
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+Title:  The Life of the Fly
+
+Author:  J. Henri Fabre 
+
+Official Release Date: September, 2002  [Etext #3422]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 04/16/01]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre
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+Preparer: Gerry Rising
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+
+
+THE LIFE OF THE FLY:
+With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography
+
+By J. Henri Fabre
+
+
+
+
+Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
+Fellow of the Zoological Society of London
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
+I      THE HARMAS
+II     THE ANTHRAX
+III    ANOTHER PROBER (PERFORATOR)
+IV     LARVAL DIMORPHISM
+V      HEREDITY
+VI     MY SCHOOLING
+VII    THE POND
+VIII   THE CADDIS WORM
+IX     THE GREENBOTTLES
+X      THE GRAY FLESH FLIES
+XI     THE BUMBLEBEE FLY
+XII    MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: NEWTON'S BINOMIAL THEOREM
+XIII   MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: MY LITTLE TABLE
+XIV    THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE LAYING
+XV     THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE GRUB
+XVI    A PARASITE OF THE MAGGOT
+XVII   RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD
+XVIII  INSECTS AND MUSHROOMS
+XIX    A MEMORABLE LESSON
+XX     INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
+
+The present volume contains all the essays on flies, or Diptera,
+from the Souvenirs entomologiques, to which I have added, in order
+to make the dimensions uniform with those of the other volumes of
+the series, the purely autobiographical essays comprised in the
+Souvenirs.  These essays, though they have no bearing upon the
+life of the fly, are among the most interesting that Henri Fabre
+has written and will, I am persuaded, make a special appeal to the
+reader.  The chapter entitled The Caddis Worm has been included
+as following directly upon The Pond.
+
+Since publishing The Life of the Spider, I was much struck by a
+passage in Dr. Chalmers Mitchell's stimulating work, The Childhood
+of Animals, in which the secretary of the Zoological Society of
+London says: 'I have attempted to avoid the use of terms familiar
+only to students of zoology and to refrain from anatomical detail,
+but at the same time to refrain from the irritating habit assuming
+that my readers have no knowledge, no dictionaries and no other
+books.'
+
+I began to wonder whether I had gone too far in simplifying the
+terminology of the Fabre essays and in appending explanatory
+footnotes to the inevitable number of outlandish names of insects.
+But my doubts vanished when I thought upon Fabre's own words in
+the first chapter of this book: 'If I write for men of learning,
+for philosophers...I write above all things for the young.  I want
+to make them love the natural story which you make them hate; and
+that is why, while keeping strictly to the domain of truth, I
+avoid your scientific prose, which too often, alas, seems borrowed
+from some Iroquois idiom!'
+
+And I can but apologize if I have been too lavish with my notes to
+this chapter in particular, which introduces to us, as in a sort
+of litany, a multitude of the insects studied by the author.  For
+the rest, I have continued my system of references to the earlier
+Fabre books, whether translated by myself or others.  Of the
+following essays, The Harmas has appeared, under another title, in
+The Daily Mail; The Pond, Industrial Chemistry and the two
+Chapters on the bluebottle in The English Review; and The Harmas,
+The Pond and Industrial Chemistry in the New York Bookman.  The
+others are new to England and America, unless any of them should
+be issued in newspapers or magazines between this date and the
+publication of the book.
+
+I wish once more to thank Miss Frances Rodwell for her assistance
+in the details of my work and in the verification of the many
+references; and my thanks are also due to Mr. Edward Cahen, who
+has been good enough to revise the two chemistry chapters for me,
+and to Mr. W. S. Graff Baker, who has performed the same kindly
+task towards the two chapters entitled Mathematical Memories.
+-- Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.  Chelsea, 8 July, 1913.
+
+[Recorder's Note: Most Translator's Footnotes have been omitted
+from this text, but some of his references to localities and
+insect names are included in brackets.  I apologize to English
+readers for changes to American spelling.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I  THE HARMAS
+
+This is what I wished for, hoc erat in votis: a bit of land, oh,
+not so very large, but fenced in, to avoid the drawbacks of a
+public way; an abandoned, barren, sun scorched bit of land,
+favored by thistles and by wasps and bees.  Here, without fear of
+being troubled by the passersby, I could consult the Ammophila and
+the Sphex [two digger or hunting wasps] and engage in that
+difficult conversation whose questions and answers have experiment
+for their language; here, without distant expeditions that take up
+my time, without tiring rambles that strain my nerves, I could
+contrive my plans of attack, lay my ambushes and watch their
+effects at every hour of the day.  Hoc erat in votis.  Yes, this
+was my wish, my dream, always cherished, always vanishing into the
+mists of the future.
+
+And it is no easy matter to acquire a laboratory in the open
+fields, when harassed by a terrible anxiety about one's daily
+bread.  For forty years have I fought, with steadfast courage,
+against the paltry plagues of life; and the long-wished-for
+laboratory has come at last.  What it has cost me in perseverance
+and relentless work I will not try to say.  It has come; and, with
+it--a more serious condition--perhaps a little leisure.  I say
+perhaps, for my leg is still hampered with a few links of the
+convict's chain.
+
+The wish is realized.  It is a little late, O my pretty insects! I
+greatly fear that the peach is offered to me when I am beginning
+to have no teeth wherewith to eat it.  Yes, it is a little late:
+the wide horizons of the outset have shrunk into a low and
+stifling canopy, more and more straitened day by day.  Regretting
+nothing in the past, save those whom I have lost; regretting
+nothing, not even my first youth; hoping nothing either, I have
+reached the point at which, worn out by the experience of things,
+we ask ourselves if life be worth the living.
+
+Amid the ruins that surround me, one strip of wall remains
+standing, immovable upon its solid base: my passion for scientific
+truth.  Is that enough, O my busy insects, to enable me to add yet
+a few seemly pages to your history?  Will my strength not cheat my
+good intentions?  Why, indeed, did I forsake you so long?  Friends
+have reproached me for it.  Ah, tell them, tell those friends, who
+are yours as well as mine, tell them that it was not forgetfulness
+on my part, not weariness, nor neglect: I thought of you; I was
+convinced that the Cerceris [a digger wasp] cave had more fair
+secrets to reveal to us, that the chase of the Sphex held fresh
+surprises in store.  But time failed me; I was alone, deserted,
+struggling against misfortune.  Before philosophizing, one had to
+live.  Tell them that; and they will pardon me.
+
+Others again have reproached me with my style, which has not the
+solemnity, nay, better, the dryness of the schools.  They fear
+lest a page that is read without fatigue should not always be the
+expression of the truth.  Were I to take their word for it, we are
+profound only on condition of being obscure.  Come here, one and
+all of you--you, the sting bearers, and you, the wing-cased armor-
+clads--take up my defense and bear witness in my favor.  Tell of
+the intimate terms on which I live with you, of the patience with
+which I observe you, of the care with which I record your actions.
+Your evidence is unanimous: yes, my pages, though they bristle not
+with hollow formulas nor learned smatterings, are the exact
+narrative of facts observed, neither more nor less; and whoever
+cares to question you in his turn will, obtain the same replies.
+
+And then, my dear insects, if you cannot convince those good
+people, because you do not carry the weight of tedium, I, in my
+turn, will say to them: 'You rip up the animal and I study it
+alive; you turn it into an object of horror and pity, whereas I
+cause it to be loved; you labor in a torture chamber and
+dissecting room, I make my observations under the blue sky to the
+song of the cicadas, you subject cell and protoplasm to chemical
+tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry
+into death, I pry into life.  And why should I not complete my
+thought: the boars have muddied the clear stream; natural history,
+youth's glorious study, has, by dint of cellular improvements,
+become a hateful and repulsive thing.  Well, if I write for men of
+learning, for philosophers, who, one day, will try to some extent
+to unravel the tough problem of instinct, I write also, I write
+above all things for the young.  I want to make them love the
+natural history which you make them hate; and that is why, while
+keeping strictly to the domain of truth, I avoid your scientific
+prose, which too often, alas seems borrowed from some Iroquois
+idiom."
+
+But this is not my business for the moment: I want to speak of the
+bit of land long cherished in my plans to form a laboratory of
+living entomology, the bit of land which I have at last obtained
+in the solitude of a little village.  It is a harmas, the name
+given, in this district [the country round Serignan, in Provence],
+to an untilled, pebbly expanse abandoned to the vegetation of the
+thyme.  It is too poor to repay the work of the plow; but the
+sheep passes there in spring, when it has chanced to rain and a
+little grass shoots up.
+
+My harmas, however, because of its modicum of red earth swamped by
+a huge mass of stones, has received a rough first attempt at
+cultivation: I am told that vines once grew here.  And, in fact,
+when we dig the ground before planting a few trees, we turn up,
+here and there, remains of the precious stock, half carbonized by
+time.  The three pronged fork, therefore, the only implement of
+husbandry that can penetrate such a soil as this, has entered
+here; and I am sorry, for the primitive vegetation has
+disappeared.  No more thyme, no more lavender, no more clumps of
+kermes oak, the dwarf oak that forms forests across which we step
+by lengthening our stride a little.  As these plants, especially
+the first two, might be of use to me by offering the Bees and
+Wasps a spoil to forage, I am compelled to reinstate them in the
+ground whence they were driven by the fork.
+
+What abounds without my mediation is the invaders of any soil that
+is first dug up and then left for a long time to its own
+resources.  We have, in the first rank, the couch grass, that
+execrable weed which three years of stubborn warfare have not
+succeeded in exterminating.  Next, in respect of number, come the
+centauries, grim looking one and all, bristling with prickles or
+starry halberds.  They are the yellow-flowered centaury, the
+mountain centaury, the star thistle and the rough centaury: the
+first predominates.  Here and there, amid their inextricable
+confusion, stands, like a chandelier with spreading, orange
+flowers for lights, the fierce Spanish oyster plant, whose spikes
+are strong as nails.  Above it, towers the Illyrian cotton
+thistle, whose straight and solitary stalk soars to a height of
+three to six feet and ends in large pink tufts.  Its armor hardly
+yields before that of the oyster plant.  Nor must we forget the
+lesser thistle tribe, with first of all, the prickly or 'cruel'
+thistle, which is so well armed that the plant collector knows not
+where to grasp it; next, the spear thistle, with its ample
+foliage, ending each of its veins with a spear head; lastly, the
+black knapweed, which gathers itself into a spiky knot.  In among
+these, in long lines armed with hooks, the shoots of the blue
+dewberry creep along the ground.  To visit the prickly thicket
+when the Wasp goes foraging, you must wear boots that come to mid-
+leg or else resign yourself to a smarting in the calves.  As long
+as the ground retains a few remnants of the vernal rains, this
+rude vegetation does not lack a certain charm, when the pyramids
+of the oyster plant and the slender branches of the cotton thistle
+rise above the wide carpet formed by the yellow-flowered centaury
+saffron heads; but let the droughts of summer come and we see but
+a desolate waste, which the flame of a match would set ablaze from
+one end to the other.  Such is, or rather was, when I took
+possession of it, the Eden of bliss where I mean to live
+henceforth alone with the insect.  Forty years of desperate
+struggle have won it for me.
+
+Eden, I said; and, from the point of view that interests me, the
+expression is not out of place.  This cursed ground, which no one
+would have had at a gift to sow with a pinch of turnip seed, is an
+earthly paradise for the bees and wasps.  Its mighty growth of
+thistles and centauries draws them all to me from everywhere
+around.  Never, in my insect hunting memories, have I seen so
+large a population at a single spot; all the trades have made it
+their rallying point.  Here come hunters of every kind of game,
+builders in clay, weavers of cotton goods, collectors of pieces
+cut from a leaf or the petals of a flower, architects in
+pasteboard, plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters boring wood,
+miners digging underground galleries, workers handling
+goldbeater's skin and many more.
+
+Who is this one?   An Anthidium [a tailor bee].  She scrapes the
+cobwebby stalk of the yellow-flowered centaury and gathers a ball
+of wadding which she carries off proudly in the tips of her
+mandibles.  She will turn it, under ground, into cotton felt
+satchels to hold the store of honey and the egg.  And these
+others, so eager for plunder?   They are Megachiles [leaf-cutting
+bees], carrying under their bellies their black, white or blood
+red reaping brushes.  They will leave the thistles to visit the
+neighboring shrubs and there cut from the leaves oval pieces which
+will be made into a fit receptacle to contain the harvest.  And
+these, clad in black velvet?   They are Chalicodomae [mason bees],
+who work with cement and gravel.  We could easily find their
+masonry on the stones in the harmas.  And these noisily buzzing
+with a sudden flight?   They are the Anthophorae [wild bees], who
+live in the old walls and the sunny banks of the neighborhood.
+
+Now come the Osmiae.  One stacks her cells in the spiral staircase
+of an empty snail shell; another, attacking the pith of a dry bit
+of bramble, obtains for her grubs a cylindrical lodging and
+divides it into floors by means of partition walls; a third
+employs the natural channel of a cut reed; a fourth is a rent-free
+tenant of the vacant galleries of some mason bee.  Here are the
+Macrocerae and the Eucerae, whose males are proudly horned; the
+Dasypodae, who carry an ample brush of bristles on their hind legs
+for a reaping implement; the Andrenae, so manifold in species; the
+slender-bellied Halicti [all wild bees].  I omit a host of others.
+If I tried to continue this record of the guests of my thistles,
+it would muster almost the whole of the honey yielding tribe.  A
+learned entomologist of Bordeaux, Professor Perez, to whom I
+submit the naming of my prizes, once asked me if I had any special
+means of hunting, to send him so many rarities and even novelties.
+I am not at all an experienced and, still less, a zealous hunter,
+for the insect interests me much more when engaged in its work
+than when struck on a pin in a cabinet.  The whole secret of my
+hunting is reduced to my dense nursery of thistles and centauries.
+
+By a most fortunate chance, with this populous family of honey
+gatherers was allied the whole hunting tribe.  The builders' men
+had distributed here and there in the harmas great mounds of sand
+and heaps of stones, with a view to running up some surrounding
+walls.  The work dragged on slowly; and the materials found
+occupants from the first year.  The mason bees had chosen the
+interstices between the stones as a dormitory where to pass the
+night, in serried groups.  The powerful eyed lizard, who, when
+close pressed, attacks both man and dog, wide mouthed, had
+selected a cave wherein to lie in wait for the passing scarab [a
+dung beetle also known as the sacred beetle]; the black-eared
+chat, garbed like a Dominican, white-frocked with black wings, sat
+on the top stone, singing his short rustic lay: his nest, with its
+sky blue eggs, must be somewhere in the heap.  The little
+Dominican disappeared with the loads of stones.  I regret him: he
+would have been a charming neighbor.  The eyed lizard I do not
+regret at all.
+
+The sand sheltered a different colony.  Here, the Bembeces [digger
+wasps] were sweeping the threshold of their burrows, flinging a
+curve of dust behind them; the Languedocian Sphex was dragging her
+Ephippigera [a green grasshopper] by the antennae; a Stizus [a
+hunting wasp] was storing her preserves of Cicadellae
+[froghoppers].  To my sorrow, the masons ended by evicting the
+sporting tribe; but, should I ever wish to recall it, I have but
+to renew the mounds of sand: they will soon all be there.
+
+Hunters that have not disappeared, their homes being different,
+are the Ammophilae, whom I see fluttering, one in spring, the
+others in autumn, along the garden walks and over the lawns, in
+search of a caterpillar; the Pompili [digger or hunting wasp], who
+travel alertly, beating their wings and rummaging in every corner
+in quest of a spider.  The largest of them waylays the Narbonne
+Lycosa [known also as the black-bellied tarantula], whose burrow
+is not infrequent in the harmas.  This burrow is a vertical well,
+with a curb of fescue grass intertwined with silk.  You can see
+the eyes of the mighty Spider gleam at the bottom of the den like
+little diamonds, an object of terror to most.  What a prey and
+what dangerous hunting for the Pompilus! And here, on a hot summer
+afternoon, is the Amazon ant, who leaves her barrack rooms in long
+battalions and marches far afield to hunt for slaves.  We will
+follow her in her raids when we find time.  Here again, around a
+heap of grasses turned to mould, are Scoliae [large hunting wasps]
+an inch and a half long, who fly gracefully and dive into the
+heap, attracted by a rich prey, the grubs of Lamellicorns,
+Orycotes and Ceotoniae [various beetles].
+
+What subjects for study! And there are more to come.  The house
+was as utterly deserted as the ground.  When man was gone and
+peace assured, the animal hastily seized on everything.  The
+warbler took up his abode in the lilac shrubs; the greenfinch
+settled in the thick shelter of the cypresses; the sparrow carted
+rags and straw under every slate; the Serin finch, whose downy
+nest is no bigger than half an apricot, came and chirped in the
+plane tree tops; the Scops made a habit of uttering his
+monotonous, piping note here, of an evening; the bird of Pallas
+Athene, the owl, came hurrying along to hoot and hiss.
+
+In front of the house is a large pond, fed by the aqueduct that
+supplies the village pumps with water.  Here, from half a mile and
+more around, come the frogs and Toads in the lovers' season.  The
+natterjack, sometimes as large as a plate, with a narrow stripe of
+yellow down his back, makes his appointments here to take his
+bath; when the evening twilight falls, we see hopping along the
+edge the midwife toad, the male, who carries a cluster of eggs,
+the size of peppercorns, wrapped round his hindlegs: the genial
+paterfamilias has brought his precious packet from afar, to leave
+it in the water and afterwards retire under some flat stone,
+whence he will emit a sound like a tinkling bell.  Lastly, when
+not croaking amid the foliage, the tree frogs indulge in the most
+graceful dives.  And so, in May, as soon as it is dark, the pond
+becomes a deafening orchestra: it is impossible to talk at table,
+impossible to sleep.  We had to remedy this by means perhaps a
+little too rigorous.  What could we do?   He who tries to sleep
+and cannot needs becomes ruthless.
+
+Bolder still, the wasp has taken possession of the dwelling house.
+On my door sill, in a soil of rubbish, nestles the white-banded
+Sphex: when I go indoors, I must be careful not to damage her
+burrows, not to tread upon the miner absorbed in her work.  It is
+quite a quarter of a century since I last saw the saucy cricket
+hunter.  When I made her acquaintance, I used to visit her at a
+few miles' distance: each time, it meant an expedition under the
+blazing August sun.  Today, I find her at my door; we are intimate
+neighbors.  The embrasure of the closed window provides an
+apartment of a mild temperature for the Pelopaeus [a mason wasp].
+The earth-built nest is fixed against the freestone wall.  To
+enter her home, the spider huntress uses a little hole left open
+by accident in the shutters.  On the moldings of the Venetian
+blinds, a few stray mason bees build their group of cells; inside
+the outer shutters, left ajar, a Eumenes [a mason wasp] constructs
+her little earthen dome, surmounted by a short, bell-mouthed neck.
+The common wasp and the Polistes [a solitary wasp] are my dinner
+guests: they visit my table to see if the grapes served are as
+ripe as they look.
+
+Here, surely--and the list is far from complete--is a company both
+numerous and select, whose conversation will not fail to charm my
+solitude, if I succeed in drawing it out.  My dear beasts of
+former days, my old friends, and others, more recent
+acquaintances, all are here, hunting, foraging, building in close
+proximity.  Besides, should we wish to vary the scene of
+observation, the mountain [Ventoux] is but a few hundred steps
+away, with its tangle of arbutus, rock roses and arborescent
+heather; with its sandy spaces dear to the Bembeces; with its
+marly slopes exploited by different wasps and bees.  And that is
+why, foreseeing these riches, I have abandoned the town for the
+village and come to Serignan to weed my turnips and water my
+lettuces.
+
+Laboratories are being founded, at great expense, on our Atlantic
+and Mediterranean coasts, where people cut up small sea animals,
+of but meager interest to us; they spend a fortune on powerful
+microscopes, delicate dissecting instruments, engines of capture,
+boats, fishing crews, aquariums, to find out how the yolk of an
+Annelid's egg is constructed, a question whereof I have never yet
+been able to grasp the full importance; and they scorn the little
+land animal, which lives in constant touch with us, which provides
+universal psychology with documents of inestimable value, which
+too often threatens the public wealth by destroying our crops.
+When shall we have an entomological laboratory for the study not
+of the dead insect, steeped in alcohol, but of the living insect;
+a laboratory having for its object the instinct, the habits, the
+manner of living, the work, the struggles, the propagation of that
+little world, with which agriculture and philosophy have most
+seriously to reckon?
+
+To know thoroughly the history of the destroyer of our vines might
+perhaps be more important than to know how this or that nerve
+fiber of a Cirriped [sea animals with hair-like legs, including
+the barnacles and acorn shells] ends; to establish by experiment
+the line of demarcation between intellect and instinct; to prove,
+by comparing facts in the zoological progression, whether human
+reason be an irreducible faculty or not: all this ought surely to
+take precedence of the number of joints in a Crustacean's antenna.
+These enormous questions would need an army of workers; and we
+have not one.  The fashion is all for the Mollusk and the
+Zoophytes [plant-like sea animals, including starfishes,
+jellyfishes, sea anemones and sponges].  The depths of the sea are
+explored with many drag nets; the soil which we tread is
+consistently disregarded.  While waiting for the fashion to
+change, I open my harmas laboratory of living entomology; and this
+laboratory shall not cost the ratepayers one farthing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II  THE ANTHRAX
+
+I made the acquaintance of the Anthrax in 1855 at Carpentras, at
+the time when the life history of the oil beetles was causing me
+to search the tall slopes beloved of the Anthophora bees [mason
+bees].  Her curious pupae, so powerfully equipped to force an
+outlet for the perfect insect incapable of the least effort, those
+pupae armed with a multiple plowshare at the fore, a trident at
+the rear and rows of harpoons on the back wherewith to rip open
+the Osmia bee's cocoon and break through the hard crust of the
+hillside, betokened a field that was worth cultivating.  The
+little that I said about her at the time brought me urgent
+entreaties: I was asked for a circumstantial chapter on the
+strange fly.  The stern necessities of life postponed to an ever
+retreating future my beloved investigations, so miserably stifled.
+Thirty years have passed; at last, a little leisure is at hand;
+and here, in the harmas of my village, with an ardor that has in
+no wise grown old, I have resumed my plans of yore, still alive
+like the coal smoldering under the ashes.  The Anthrax has told me
+her secrets, which I in my turn am going to divulge.  Would that I
+could address all those who cheered me on this path, including
+first and foremost the revered Master of the Landes [Leon Dufour].
+But the ranks have thinned, many have been promoted to another
+world and their disciple lagging behind them can but record, in
+memory of those who are no more, the story of the insect clad in
+deepest mourning.
+
+In the course of July, let us give a few sideward knocks to the
+bracing pebbles and detach the nests of the Chalicodoma of the
+Walls [a mason bee] from their supports.  Loosened by the shock,
+the dome comes off cleanly, all in one piece.  Moreover--and this
+is a great advantage--the cells come into view wide open on the
+base of the exposed nest, for at this point they have no other
+wall than the surface of the pebble.  In this way, without any
+scraping, which would be wearisome work for the operator and
+dangerous to the inhabitants of the dome, we have all the cells
+before our eyes, together with their contents, consisting of a
+silky, amber-yellow cocoon, as delicate and translucent as an
+onion peeling.  Let us split the dainty wrapper with the scissors,
+chamber by chamber, nest by nest.  If fortune be at all
+propitious, as it always is to the persevering, we shall end by
+finding that the cocoons harbor two larvae together, one more or
+less faded in appearance, the other fresh and plump.  We shall
+also find some, no less plentiful, in which the withered larva is
+accompanied by a family of little grubs wriggling uneasily around
+it.
+
+Examination at once reveals the tragedy that is happening under
+the cover of the cocoon.  The flacid and faded larva is the mason
+bee's.  A month ago, in June, having finished its mess of honey,
+it wove its silken sheath for a bedchamber wherein to take the
+long sleep which is the prelude to the metamorphosis.  Bulging
+with fat, it is a rich and defenseless morsel for whoever is able
+to reach it.  Then, in spite of apparently insurmountable
+obstacles, the mortar wall and the tent without an opening, the
+flesh-eating larvae appeared in the secret retreat and are now
+glutting themselves on the sleeper.  Three different species take
+part in the carnage, often in the same nest, in adjoining cells.
+The diversity of shapes informs us of the presence of more than
+one enemy; the final stage of the creatures will tell us the names
+and qualities of the three invaders.
+
+Forestalling the secrets.  of the future for the sake of greater
+clearness, I will anticipate the actual facts and come at once to
+the results produced.  When it is by itself on the body of the
+mason bee's larva, the murderous grub belongs either to Anthrax
+trifasciata, MEIGEN, or to Leucospis gigas, FAB.  But, if numerous
+little worms, often a score and more, swarm around the victim,
+then it is a Chalcidid's family which we have before us.  Each of
+these ravagers shall have its biography.  Let us begin with the
+Anthrax.
+
+And first the grub, as it is after consuming its victim, when it
+remains the sole occupant of the mason bee's cocoon.  It is a
+naked worm, smooth, legless and blind, of a creamy dead white,
+each segment a perfect ring, very much curved when at rest, but
+with the tendency to become almost straight when disturbed.
+Through the diaphanous skin, the lens distinguishes patches of
+fat, which are the cause of its characteristic coloring.  When
+younger, as a tiny grub a few millimeters long, it is streaked
+with two different kinds of stains, some white, opaque and of a
+creamy tint, others translucent and of the palest amber.  The
+former come from adipose masses in course of formation; the second
+from the nourishing fluid or from the blood which laves those
+masses.
+
+Including the head, I count thirteen segments.  In the middle of
+the body these segments are well marked, being separated by a
+slight groove; but in the forepart they are difficult to count.
+The head is small and is soft, like the rest of the body, with no
+sign of any mouth parts even under the close scrutiny of the lens.
+It is a white globule, the size of a tiny pin's head and continued
+at the back by a pad a little larger, from which it is separated
+by a scarcely appreciable crease.  The whole is a sort of nipple
+swelling slightly on the upper surface; and its double structure
+is so difficult to perceive that at first we take it for the
+animal's head alone, though it includes both the head and the
+prothorax, or first segment of the thorax.
+
+The mesothorax, or middle segment of the thorax, which is two or
+three times larger in diameter, is flattened in front and
+separated from the nipple formed by the prothorax and the head by
+a deep, narrow, curved fissure.  On its front surface are two pale
+red stigmata, or respiratory orifices, placed pretty close
+together.  The metathorax, or last segment of the thorax, is a
+little larger still in diameter and protrudes.  These abrupt
+increases in circumference result in a marked hump, sloping
+sharply towards the front.  The nipple of which the head forms
+part is set at the bottom of this hump.
+
+After the metathorax, the shape becomes regular and cylindrical,
+while decreasing slightly in girth in the last two or three
+segments.  Close to the line of separation of the last two rings,
+I am able to distinguish, not without difficulty, two very small
+stigmata, just a little darker in color.  They belong to the last
+segment.  In all, four respiratory orifices, two in front and two
+behind, as is the rule among Flies.  The length of the full sized
+larva is 15 to 20 millimeters and its breadth 5 to 6.
+
+Remarkable in the first place by the protuberance of its thorax
+and the smallness of its head, the grub of the Anthrax acquires
+exceptional interest by its manner of feeding.  Let us begin by
+observing that, deprived of all, even the most rudimentary walking
+apparatus, the animal is absolutely incapable of shifting its
+position.  If I disturb its rest, it curves and straightens itself
+in turns by a series of contractions, it tosses about violently
+where it lies, but does not manage to progress.  It fidgets and
+gets no farther.  We shall see later the magnificent problem
+raised by this inertness.
+
+For the moment, a most unexpected fact claims all our attention.
+I refer to the extreme readiness with which the Anthrax' larva
+quits and returns to the Chalicodoma grub on which it is feeding.
+After witnessing flesh eating larvae at hundreds and hundreds of
+meals, I suddenly find myself confronted with a manner of eating
+that bears no relation to anything which I have seen before.  I
+feel myself in a world that baffles my old experience.  Let us
+recall the table manners of a larva living on prey, the
+Ammophila's for instance, when devouring its caterpillar.  A hole
+is made in the victim's side; and the head and neck of the
+nursling dive deep into the wound, to root luxuriously among the
+entrails.  There is never a withdrawal from the gnawed belly,
+never a recoil to interrupt the feast and to take breath awhile.
+The vivacious animal always goes forward, chewing, swallowing,
+digesting, until the caterpillar's skin is emptied of its
+contents.  Once seated at table, it does not budge as long as the
+victuals last.  To tease it with a straw is not always enough to
+induce it to withdraw its head outside the wound; I have to use
+violence.  When removed by force and then left to its own devices,
+the creature hesitates for a long time, stretches itself and
+mouths around, without trying to open a passage through a new
+wound.  It needs the attacking point that has just been abandoned.
+If it finds the spot, it makes its way in and resumes the work of
+eating; but its future is jeopardized from this time forward, for
+the game, now perhaps tackled at inopportune points, is liable to
+go bad.
+
+With the Anthrax' grub, there is none of this mangling, none of
+this persistent clinging to the entrance wound.  I have but to
+tease it with the tip of a hair pencil and forthwith it retires;
+and the lens reveals no wound at the abandoned spot, no such
+effusion of blood as there would be if the skin were perforated.
+When its sense of security is restored, the grub once more applies
+its pimple head to the fostering larva, at any point, no matter
+where; and, so long as my curiosity does not prevent it, keeps
+itself fixed there, without the least effort, or the least
+perceptible movement that could account for the adhesion.  If I
+repeat the touch with the pencil, I see the same sudden retreat
+and, soon after, the same contact just as readily renewed.
+
+This facility for gripping, quitting and regripping, now here, now
+there and always without a wound, the part of the victim whence
+the nourishment is drawn tells us of itself that the mouth of the
+Anthrax is not armed with mandibular fangs capable of digging into
+the skin and tearing it.  If the flesh were gashed by any such
+pincers, one or two attempts would be necessary before they could
+be released or reapplied; besides, each point bitten would display
+a lesion.  Well, there is nothing of the kind: a conscientious
+examination through the magnifying glass shows conclusively that
+the skin is intact; the grub glues its mouth to its prey or
+withdraws it with an ease that can only be explained by a process
+of simple contact.  This being so, the Anthrax does not chew its
+food as do the other carnivorous grubs; it does not eat, it
+inhales.
+
+This method of taking nourishment implies an exceptional apparatus
+of the mouth, into which it behooves us to inquire before
+continuing.  My most powerful magnifying glass at last discovers,
+at the center of the pimple head, a small spot of an amber-russet
+color; and that is all.  For a more exhaustive examination we will
+employ the microscope.  I cut off the strange pimple with the
+scissors, wash it in a drop of water and place it on the object
+slide.  The mouth now stands revealed as a round spot which, for
+hue and for the smallness of its size, may be compared with the
+front stigmata.  It is a small conical crater, with sides of a
+pale yellowish-red and with faint, more or less concentric lines.
+At the bottom of this funnel is the opening of the gullet, itself
+tinted red in front and promptly spreading into a cone at the
+back.  There is not the slightest trace of mandibular fangs, of
+jaws, of mouth parts for seizing and grinding.  Everything is
+reduced to the bowl shaped opening, with a delicate lining of
+horny texture, as is shown by the amber hue and the concentric
+streaks.  When I look for some term to designate this digestive
+entrance, of which so far I know no other example, I can find only
+that of a sucker or cupping glass.  Its attack is a mere kiss, but
+what a perfidious kiss!
+
+We know the machine; now let us see the working.  To facilitate
+observation, I shifted the newborn Anthrax grub, together with the
+Chalicodoma grub, its wet nurse, from the natal cell into a glass
+tube.  I was thus able, by employing as many tubes as I wanted, to
+follow from start to finish, in all its most intimate details, the
+strange repast which I am going to describe.
+
+The worm is fixed by its sucker to any convenient part of the
+nurse, plump and fat as butter.  It is ready to break off its kiss
+suddenly, should anything disquiet it, and to resume it as easily
+when tranquillity is restored.  No Lamb enjoys greater liberty
+with its mother's teat.  After three or four days of this contact
+of the nurse and nursling, the former, at first replete and
+endowed with the glossy skin that is a sign of health, begins to
+assume a withered aspect.  Her sides fall in, her fresh color
+fades, her skin becomes covered with little folds and gives
+evidence of an appreciable shrinking in this breast which, instead
+of milk, yields fat and blood.  A week is hardly past before the
+progress of the exhaustion becomes startlingly rapid.  The nurse
+is flabby and wrinkled, as though borne down by her own weight,
+like a very slack object.  If I move her from her place, she flops
+and sprawls like a half-filled water bottle over the new
+supporting plane.  But the Anthrax' kiss goes on emptying her:
+soon she is but a sort of shriveled lard bag, decreasing from hour
+to hour, from which the sucker draws a few last oily drains.  At
+length, between the twelfth and the fifteenth day, all that
+remains of the larva of the mason bee is a white granule, hardly
+as large as a pin's head.
+
+This granule is the water bottle drained to the last drop, is the
+nurse's breast emptied of all its contents.  I soften the meager
+remnant in water; then, keeping it still immersed, I blow into it
+through an extremely attenuated glass tube.  The skin fills out,
+distends and resumes the shape of the larva, without there being
+an outlet anywhere for the compressed air.  It is intact,
+therefore; it is free of any perforation, which would be forthwith
+revealed under the water by an escape of gas.  And so, under the
+Anthrax' cupping glass, the oily bottle has been drained by a
+simple transpiration through the membrane; the substance of the
+nurse grub has been transfused into the body of the nursling by a
+process akin to that known in physics as endosmosis.  What should
+we say to a method of being suckled by the mere application of the
+mouth to a teatless breast?  What we see here may be compared with
+that: without any outlet, the milk of the Chalicodoma grub passes
+into the stomach of the Anthrax' larva.
+
+Is it really an instance of endosmosis?  Might it not rather be
+atmospheric pressure that stimulates the flow of nourishing fluids
+and distils them into the Anthrax' cup-shaped mouth, working, in
+order to create a vacuum.  almost like the suckers of the
+Cuttlefish?  All this is possible, but I shall refrain from
+deciding, preferring to assign a large share to the unknown in
+this extraordinary method of nutrition.  It ought, I think, to
+provide physiologists with a field of research in which new views
+on the hydrodynamics of live fluids might well be gleaned; and
+this field trenches upon others that would also yield rich
+harvests.  The brief span of my days compels me to set the problem
+without seeking to solve it.
+
+And the second problem is this: the Chalicodoma grub destined to
+feed the Anthrax is without a wound of any kind.  The mother of
+the tiny larva is a feeble Fly deprived of whatsoever weapon
+capable of injuring her offspring's prey.  Moreover, she is
+absolutely powerless to penetrate the mason bee's fortress,
+powerless as a fluff of down against a rock.  On this point there
+is no doubt: the future wet nurse of the Anthrax has not been
+paralyzed as are the live provisions collected by the Hunting
+Wasps; she has received no bite nor scratch nor contusion of any
+sort; she has experienced nothing out of the common: in short, she
+is in her normal state.  The billeted nursling arrives, we shall
+presently see how; he arrives, scarcely visible, almost defying
+the scrutiny of the lens; and, having made his preparations, he
+installs himself, he, the atom, upon the monstrous nurse, whom he
+is to drain to the very husk.  And she, not paralyzed by a
+preliminary vivisection, endowed with all her normal vitality,
+lets him have his way, lets herself be sucked dry, with the utmost
+apathy.  Not a tremor in her outraged flesh, not a quiver of
+resistance.  No corpse could show greater indifference to the bite
+which it receives.
+
+Ah, but the maggot has chosen the hour of attack with traitorous
+cunning! Had it appeared upon the scene earlier, when the larva
+was consuming its store of honey, things of a surety would have
+gone badly with it.  The assaulted one, feeling herself bled to
+death by that ravenous kiss, would have protested with much
+wriggling of body and grinding of mandibles.  The position would
+have ceased to be tenable and the intruder would have perished.
+But at this hour all danger has disappeared.  Enclosed in its
+silken tent, the larva is seized with the lethargy that precedes
+the metamorphosis.  Its condition is not death, but neither is it
+life.  It is an intermediary condition; it is almost the latent
+vitality of grain or egg.  Therefore there is no sign of
+irritation on the larva's part under the needle with which I stir
+it and still less under the sucker of the Anthrax grub, which is
+able to drain the affluent breast in perfect safety.
+
+This lack of resistance, induced by the torpor of the
+transformation, appears to me necessary, in view of the weakness
+of the nursling as it leaves the egg, whenever the mother is
+herself incapable of depriving the victim of the power of self
+defense.  And so the nonparalyzed larvae are attacked during the
+period of the nymphosis.  We shall soon see other instances of
+this.
+
+Motionless though it be, the Chalicodoma grub is none the less
+alive.  The primrose tint and the glossy skin are unequivocal
+signs of health: Were it really dead, it would, in less than
+twenty-four hours, turn a dirty brown and, soon after, decompose
+into a fluid putrescence.  Now here is the marvelous thing: during
+the fortnight, roughly, that the Anthrax' meal lasts, the butter
+color of the larva, an unfailing symptom of the presence of life,
+continues unaltered and does not change into brown, the sign of
+putrefaction, until hardly anything remains; and even then the
+brown hue is often absent.  As a rule, the look of live flesh is
+preserved until the final pellet, formed of the skin, the sole
+residue, makes its appearance.  This pellet is white, with not a
+speck of tainted matter, proving that life persists until the body
+is reduced to nothing.
+
+We here witness the transfusion of one animal into another, the
+change of Chalicodoma substance into Anthrax substance; and, as
+long as the transfusion is not complete, as long as the eaten has
+not disappeared altogether and become the eater, the ruined
+organism fights against destruction.  What manner of life is this,
+which may be compared with the life of a night light whose
+extinction is not accomplished until the last drop of oil has
+burnt away?  How is any creature able to fight against the final
+tragedy of corruption up to the last moment in which a nucleus of
+matter remains as the seat of vital energy?  The forces of the
+living creature are here dissipated not through any disturbance of
+the equilibrium of those forces, but for the want of any point of
+application for them: the larva dies because materially there is
+no more of it.
+
+Can we be in the presence of the diffusive life of the plant, a
+life which persists in a fragment?  By no means: the grub is a
+more delicate organic structure.  There is unity between the
+several parts; and none of them can be jeopardized without
+involving the ruin of the others.  If I myself give the larva a
+wound, if I bruise it, the whole body very soon turns brown and
+begins to rot.  It dies and decomposes by the mere prick of a
+needle; it keeps alive, or at least preserves the freshness of the
+live tissues, so long as it is not entirely emptied by the
+Anthrax' sucker.  A nothing kills it; an atrocious wasting does
+not.  No, I fail to understand the problem; and I bequeath it to
+others.
+
+All that I can see by way of a glimpse--and even then I put
+forward my suspicions with extreme reserve--all that I am
+permitted to surmise is reduced to this: the substance of the
+sleeping larva as yet has no very definite static existence; it is
+like the raw materials collected for a building; it is waiting for
+the elaboration that is to make a bee of it.  To mould those
+shapeless lumps of the future insect, the air, that prime adjuster
+of living things, circulates among them, passing through a network
+of ducts.  To organize them, to direct the placing of them, the
+nervous system, the embryo of the animal, distributes its
+ramifications over them.  Nerve and air duct, therefore, are the
+essentials; the rest is so much material in reserve for the
+process of the metamorphosis.  As long as that material is not
+employed, as long as it has not acquired its final equilibrium, it
+can grow less and less; and life, though languishing, will
+continue all the same on the express condition that the
+respiratory organs and the nervous filaments be respected.  It is
+as it were the flame of the lamp, which, whether full or empty,
+continues to give light so long as the wick is soaked in oil.
+Nothing but fluids, the plastic materials held in reserve, can be
+distilled by the Anthrax' sucker through the unpierced skin of the
+grub; no part of the respiratory and nervous systems passes.  As
+the two essential functions remain unscathed, life goes on until
+exhaustion is completed.  On the other hand, if I myself injure
+the larva, I disturb the nervous or air conducting filaments; and
+the bruised part spreads a taint, followed by putrefaction, all
+over the body.
+
+I have elsewhere, speaking of the Scolia [a digger wasp] devouring
+the Cetonia grub, enlarged upon this refined art of eating which
+consists in consuming the prey while killing it only at the last
+mouthfuls.  The Anthrax has the same requirements as his
+competitors who dine off fresh viands.  He needs meat of that day,
+taken from a single joint that has to last a fortnight without
+going bad.  His method of consuming reaches the highest level of
+art: he does not cut into his prey, he sips it little by little
+through his sucker.  In this way, any dangerous risk is averted.
+Whether he imbibe at this spot or at that, even if he abandon the
+sucking process and resume it later, by no accident can he ever
+attack that which it is incumbent upon him to respect lest
+corruption supervene.  The others have a fixed position on the
+victim, a place at which their mandibles have to bite and enter.
+If they move away from it, if they miss the appointed path, they
+imperil their existence.  The Anthrax, more highly favored, puts
+his mouth where it suits him; he leaves off when he pleases and
+when he pleases starts again.
+
+Unless I labor under a delusion, I think that I see the necessity
+for this privilege.  The egg of the carnivorous burrower is firmly
+fixed on the victim at a point which varies considerably, it is
+true, according to the nature of the prey, but which is uniform
+for the same species of prey; moreover--and this is an important
+condition--the point of adhesion of that egg is always the head,
+whereas the egg of a bee, of the Osmia, for instance, is fixed to
+the mess of honey by the hinder end.  When hatched, the new born
+Wasp grub has not to choose for itself, at its risk and peril, the
+suitable point at which to take the first cut in the quarry
+without fear of killing it too quickly: all that it need do is to
+bite at the spot where it has just been born.  The mother, with
+her unfailing instinct, has already made the dangerous choice; she
+has stuck her egg on the propitious spot and, by the very act of
+doing so, marked out the course for the inexperienced grub to
+follow.  The tact of ripe age here guides the young larva's
+behavior at table.
+
+The conditions are very different in the Anthrax' case.  The egg
+is not placed upon the victuals, it is not even laid in the mason
+bee's cell.  This is the natural consequence of the mother's
+feeble frame and of her lack of any instrument, such as a probe or
+auger, capable of piercing the mortar wall.  It is for the newly
+hatched grub to make its own way into the dwelling.  It enters,
+finds itself in the presence of ample provisions, the larva of the
+mason bee.  Free of its actions, it is at liberty to attack the
+prey where it chooses; or rather the attacking point will be
+decided at haphazard by the first contact of the mouth in quest of
+food.  Grant this mouth a set of carving tools, jaws and
+mandibles; in short, suppose the grub of the Fly to possess a
+manner of eating similar to that of the other carnivorous larvae;
+and the nursling is at once threatened with a speedy death.  He
+will split open his nurse's belly, he will dig without any rule to
+guide him, he will bite at random, essentials as well as
+accessories; and, from one day to the next, he will set up
+gangrene in the violated mass, even as I myself do when I give it
+a wound.  For the lack of an attacking point prescribed for him at
+birth, he will perish on the damaged provisions.  His freedom of
+action will have killed him.
+
+Certainly, liberty is a noble attribute, even in an insignificant
+grub; but it also has its dangers everywhere.  The Anthrax escapes
+the peril only on the condition of being, so to speak, muzzled.
+His mouth is not a fierce forceps that tears asunder; it is a
+sucker that exhausts but does not wound.  Thus restrained by this
+safety appliance, which changes the bite into a kiss, the grub has
+fresh victuals until it has finished growing, although it knows
+nothing of the rules of methodical consumption at a fixed point
+and in a predetermined direction.
+
+The considerations which I have set forth seem to me strictly
+logical: the Anthrax, owing to the very fact that he is free to
+take his nourishment where he pleases on the body of the fostering
+larva, must, for his own protection, be made incapable of opening
+his victim's body.  I am so utterly convinced of this harmonious
+relation between the eater and the eaten that I do not hesitate to
+set it up as a principle.  I will therefore say this: whenever the
+egg of any kind of insect is not fastened to the larva destined
+for its food, the young grub, free to select the attacking point
+and to change it at will, is as it were muzzled and consumes its
+provisions by a sort of suction, without inflicting any
+appreciable wound.  This restriction is essential to the
+maintenance of the victuals in good condition.  My principle is
+already supported by examples many and various, whose depositions
+are all to the same effect.  The witnesses include, after the
+Anthrax, the Leucospis [a parasitic insect] and his rivals, whose
+evidence we shall hear presently; the Ephialtes mediator [an
+Ichneumon fly], who feeds, in the dry brambles, on the larva of
+the Black Psen [a digger wasp]; the Myodites, that strange, fly-
+shaped beetle whose grub consumes the larva of the cockchafer.
+All--flies, ichneumon flies and beetles--scrupulously spare their
+foster mother; they are careful not to tear her skin, so that the
+vessel may keep its liquid good to the last.
+
+The wholesomeness of the victuals is not the only condition
+imposed: I find a second, which is no less essential.  The
+substance of the fostering larva must be sufficiently fluid to
+ooze through the unbroken skin under the action of the sucker.
+Well, the necessary fluidity is realized as the time of the
+metamorphosis draws near.  When they wished Medea to restore
+Pelias to the vigor of youth, his daughters cut the old king's
+body to pieces and boiled it in a cauldron, for there can be no
+new existence without a prior dissolution.  We must pull down
+before we can rebuild; the analysis of death is the first step
+towards the synthesis of life.  The substance of the grub that is
+to be transformed into a bee begins, therefore, by disintegrating
+and dissolving into a fluid broth.  The materials of the future
+insect are obtained by a general recasting.  Even as the founder
+puts his old bronzes into the melting pot in order afterwards to
+cast them in a mould whence the metal will issue in a different
+shape, so life liquefies the grub, a mere digesting machine, now
+thrown aside, and out of its running matter produces the perfect
+insect, bee, butterfly or beetle, the final manifestation of the
+living creature.
+
+Let us open a Chalicodoma grub under the microscope, during the
+period of torpor.  Its contents consists almost entirely of a
+liquid broth, in which swim numberless oily globules and a fine
+dust of uric acid, a sort of off-throw of the oxidized tissues.  A
+flowing thing, shapeless and nameless, is all that the animal is,
+if we add abundant ramified air ducts, some nervous filaments and,
+under the skin, a thin layer of muscular fibers.  A condition of
+this kind accounts for a fatty transpiration through the skin when
+the Anthrax' sucker is at work.  At any other time, when the larva
+is in the active period or else when the insect has reached the
+perfect stage, the firmness of the tissues would resist the
+transfusion and the suckling of the Anthrax would become a
+difficult matter, or even impossible.  In point of fact, I find
+the grub of the fly established, in the vast majority of cases, on
+the sleeping larva and sometimes, but rarely, on the pupa.  Never
+do I see it on the vigorous larva eating its honey; and hardly
+ever on the insect brought to perfection, as we find it enclosed
+in its cell all through the autumn and winter.  And we can say the
+same of the other grub eaters that drain their victims without
+wounding them: all are engaged in their death dealing work during
+the period of torpor, when the tissues are fluidified.  They empty
+their patient, who has become a bag of running grease with a
+diffused life; but not one, among those I know, reaches the
+Anthrax' perfection in the art of extraction.
+
+Nor can any be compared with the Anthrax as regards the means
+brought into play in order to leave the cell.  These others, when
+they become perfect insects, have implements for sapping and
+demolishing, stout mandibles, capable of digging the ground, of
+pulling down clay partition walls and even of reducing the mason
+bee's tough cement to powder.  The Anthrax, in her final form, has
+nothing like this.  Her mouth is a short, soft proboscis, good at
+most for soberly licking the sugary exudations of the flowers; her
+slim legs are so feeble that to move a grain of sand were an
+excessive task for them, enough to strain every joint; her great,
+stiff wings, which must remain full spread, do not allow her to
+slip through a narrow passage; her delicate suit of downy velvet,
+from which you take the bloom by merely breathing on it, could not
+withstand the rough contact of the gallery of a mine.  Unable
+herself to enter the Mason bee's cell to lay her egg, she cannot
+leave it either, when the time comes to free herself and appear in
+broad daylight in her wedding dress.  The larva, on its side, is
+powerless to prepare the way for the coming flight.  That buttery
+little cylinder, owning no tools but a sucker so flimsy that it
+barely arrives at substance and so small that it is almost a
+geometrical point, is even weaker than the adult insect, which at
+least flies and walks.  The Mason bee's cell represents to it a
+granite cave.  How to get out?  The problem would be insoluble to
+those two incapables, if nothing else played its part.
+
+Among insects, the nymph, or pupa, the transition stage between
+the larval and the adult form, is generally a striking picture of
+every weakness of a budding organism.  A sort of mummy tight bound
+in swaddling clothes, motionless and impassive, it awaits the
+resurrection.  Its tender tissues flow in every direction; its
+limbs, transparent as crystal, are held fixed in their place,
+along the side, lest a movement should disturb the exquisite
+delicacy of the work in course of accomplishment.  Even so, to
+secure his recovery, is a broken boned patient held captive in the
+surgeon's bandages.  Absolute stillness is necessary in both
+cases, lest they be crippled or even die.
+
+Well, here, by a strange inversion that confuses all our views on
+life, a Cyclopean task is laid upon the nymph of the Anthrax.  It
+is the nymph that has to toil, to strive, to exhaust itself in
+efforts to burst the wall and open the way out.  To the embryo
+falls the desperate duty, which shows no mercy to the nascent
+flesh; to the adult insect the joy of resting in the sun.  This
+transposition of functions has as its result a well sinker's
+equipment in the nymph, an eccentric, complicated equipment which
+nothing suggested in the larva and which nothing recalls in the
+perfect insect.  The set of tools includes an assortment of
+plowshares, gimlets, hooks and spears and of other implements that
+are not found in our trades nor named in our dictionaries.  Let us
+do our best to describe the strange piercing gear.
+
+In a fortnight at most, the Anthrax has consumed the Chalicodoma
+grub, whereof naught remains but the skin, gathered into a white
+granule.  By the time that July is nearly over, it becomes rare to
+find any nurslings left upon their nurses.  From this period until
+the following May, nothing fresh happens.  The Anthrax retains its
+larval shape without any appreciable change and lies motionless in
+the mason bee's cocoon, beside the pellet remains.  When the fine
+days of May arrive, the grub shrivels and casts its skin and the
+nymph appears, fully clad in a stout, reddish, horny hide.
+
+The head is round and large, separated from the thorax by a
+strangulated furrow, crowned on top and in front with a sort of
+diadem of six hard, sharp, black spikes, arranged in a semicircle
+whose concave side faces downward.  These spikes decrease slightly
+in length from the summit to the ends of the arch.  Taken
+together, they suggest the radial crowns which we see the Roman
+emperors of the Decadence wear on the medals.  This six-fold
+plowshare is the chief excavating tool.  Lower down, on the median
+line, the instrument is finished off with a separate group of two
+small black spikes, placed close together.
+
+The thorax is smooth, the wing cases large, folded under the body
+like a scarf and coming almost to the middle of the abdomen.  This
+has nine segments, of which four, starting with the second, are
+armed, on the back, down the middle, with a belt of little horny
+arches, pale brown in color, drawn up parallel to one another, set
+in the skin by their convex surfaces and finishing at both ends
+with a hard, black point.  Altogether, the belt thus forms a
+double row of little thorns, with a hollow in between.  I count
+about twenty-five twin-toothed arches to one segment, which gives
+a total of two hundred spikes for the four rings thus armed.
+
+The use of this rasp, or grater, is obvious: it gives the nymph a
+purchase on the wall of its gallery as the work proceeds.  Thus
+anchored on a host of points, the stern pioneer is able to hit the
+obstacle harder with its diadem of awls.  Moreover, to make it
+more difficult for the instrument to recoil, long, stiff bristles,
+pointing backwards, are scattered here and there among the
+climbing belts.  There are some besides on the other segments,
+both on the ventral and the dorsal surface.  On the flanks, they
+are thicker and arranged as it were in clusters.
+
+The sixth segment carries a similar belt, but a much less powerful
+one, consisting of a single row of unassuming thorns.  The belt is
+weaker still on the seventh segment; lastly, on the eighth, it is
+reduced to a mere rough brown shading.  Commencing with the sixth,
+the rings decrease in width and the abdomen ends in a cone, the
+extremity of which, formed of the ninth segment, constitutes a
+weapon of a new kind.  It is a sheaf of eight brown spikes.  The
+last two exceed the others in length and stand out from the group
+in a double terminal plowshare.
+
+There is a round air hole in front, on either side of the thorax,
+and similar stigmata on the flanks of each of the first seven
+abdominal segments.  When at rest, the nymph is curved into a bow.
+When about to act, it suddenly unbends and straightens itself.  It
+measures 15 to 20 millimeters long and 4 to 5 millimeters across.
+
+Such is the strange perforating machine that is to prepare an
+outlet for the feeble Anthrax through the Mason bee's cement.  The
+structural details, so difficult to explain in words, may be
+summed up as follows: in front, on the forehead, a diadem of
+spikes, the ramming and digging tool; behind, a many bladed
+plowshare which fits into a socket and allows the pupa to slacken
+suddenly in readiness for an attack on the barrier which has to be
+demolished; on the back, four climbing belts, or graters, which
+keep the animal in position by biting on the walls of the tunnel
+with their hundreds of teeth; and, all over the body, long, stiff
+bristles, pointing backwards, to prevent falls or recoils.
+
+A similar structure exists in the other species of Anthrax with
+slight variations of detail.  I will confine myself to one
+instance, that of Anthrax sinuata, who thrives at the cost of
+Osmia tricornis.  Her nymph differs from that of Anthrax
+trifasciata, the Anthrax of the mason bee, in possessing less
+powerful armor.  Its four climbing belts consist of only fifteen
+to seventeen double spiked arches, instead of twenty-five; also,
+the abdominal segments, from the sixth onwards, are supplied
+merely with stiff bristles, without a trace of horny spikes.  If
+the evolution of the various Anthrax flies were better known to
+us, the number of these arches would, I believe, be of great
+service to entomology in the differentiation of species.  I see it
+remaining constant for any given species, with marked variations
+between one species and another.  But this is not my business: I
+merely call the attention of the classifiers to this field of
+study and pass on.
+
+About the end of May, the coloring of the nymph, hitherto a light
+red, alters greatly and forecasts the coming transformation.  The
+head, the thorax and the scarf formed by the wings become a
+handsome, shiny black.  A dark band shows on the back of the four
+segments with their two rows of spikes; three spots appear on the
+two next rings; the anal armor becomes darker.  In this manner we
+foresee the black livery of the coming insect.  The time has
+arrived for the pupa to work at the exit gallery.
+
+I was anxious to see it in action, not under natural conditions,
+which would be impracticable, but in a glass tube in which I
+confine it between two thick stoppers of sorghum pith.  The space
+thus marked off is about the same size as the natal cell.  The
+partitions front and back, although not so stout as the
+Chalicodoma's masonry, are nevertheless firm enough not to yield
+except to prolonged efforts; on the other hand, the side walls are
+smooth and the toothed belts will not be able to grip them: a most
+unfavorable condition for the worker.  No matter: in the space of
+a single day, the pupa pierces the front partition, three quarters
+of an inch thick.  I see it fixing its double plowshare against
+the back partition, arching into a bow and then suddenly releasing
+itself and striking the plug in front of it with its barbed
+forehead.  Under the impact of the spikes, the sorghum slowly
+crumbles to pieces.  It is slow in coming away; but it comes away
+all the same, atom by atom.  At long intervals, the method
+changes.  With its crown of awls driven into the pith, the animal
+frets and fidgets, sways on the pivot of its anal armor.  The work
+of the auger follows that of the pickaxe.  Then the blows
+recommence, interspersed with periods of rest to recover from the
+fatigue.  At last, the hole is made.  The pupa slips into it, but
+does not pass through entirely: the head and thorax appear
+outside; the abdomen remains held in the gallery.
+
+The glass cell, with its lack of supports at the side, has
+certainly perplexed my subject, which does not seem to have made
+use of all its methods.  The hole through the sorghum is wide and
+irregular; it is a clumsy breach and not a gallery.  When made
+through the mason bee's walls, it is cylindrical, fairly neat and
+exactly of the animal's diameter.  So I hope that, under natural
+conditions, the pupa does not give quite so many blows with the
+pickaxe and prefers to work with the drill.
+
+Narrowness and evenness in the exit tunnel are necessary to it.
+It always remains half caught in it and even pretty securely fixed
+by the graters on its back.  Only the head and thorax emerge into
+the outer air.  This is a last precaution for the final
+deliverance.  A fixed support is, in fact, indispensable to the
+Anthrax for issuing from her horny sheath, unfurling her great
+wings and extricating her slender legs from their scabbards.  All
+this very delicate work would be endangered by any lack of
+steadiness.
+
+The pupa, therefore, remains fixed by the graters of its back in
+the narrow exit gallery and thus supplies the stable equilibrium
+essential to the new birth.  All is ready.  It is time now for the
+great act.  A transversal cleft makes its appearance on the
+forehead, at the bottom of the perforating diadem; a second, but
+longitudinal slit divides the skull in two and extends down the
+thorax.  Through this cross-shaped opening, the Anthrax suddenly
+appears, all moist with the humors of life's laboratory.  She
+steadies herself upon her trembling legs, dries her wings and
+takes to flight, leaving at the window of the cell her nymphal
+slough, which keeps intact for a very long period.  The sand-
+colored fly has five or six weeks before her, wherein to explore
+the clay nests amid the thyme and to take her small share of the
+joys of life.  In July, we shall see her once more, busy this time
+with the entrance into the cell, which is even stranger than the
+exit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III  ANOTHER PROBER (PERFORATOR)
+
+What can he be called, this creature whose style and title I dare
+not inscribe at the head of the chapter?  His name is
+Monodontomerus cupreus, SM.  Just try it, for fun: Mo-no-don-to-
+me-rus.  What a gorgeous mouthful! What an idea it gives one of
+some beast of the Apocalypse! We think, when we pronounce the
+word, of the prehistoric monsters: the mastodon, the mammoth, the
+ponderous megatherium.  Well, we are misled by the scientific
+label: we have to do with a very paltry insect, smaller than the
+common gnat.
+
+There are good people like that, only too happy to serve science
+with resounding appellations that might come from Timbuktu; they
+cannot name you a midge without striking terror into you.  O ye
+wise and revered ones, ye christeners of animals, I am willing, in
+my study, to make use--but not undue use--of your harsh
+terminology, with its conglomeration of syllables; but there is a
+danger of their leaving the sanctum and appearing before the
+public, which is always ready to show its lack of deference for
+terms that do not respect its ears.  I, wishing to speak like
+everybody else, so that I may be understood by all, and persuaded
+that science has no need of this Brobdignagian jargon, make a
+point of avoiding technical nomenclature when it becomes too
+barbarous, when it threatens to lumber the page the moment my pen
+attempts it.  And so I abandon Monodontomerus.
+
+It is a puny little insect, almost as tiny as the midges whom we
+see eddying in a ray of sunshine at the end of autumn.  Its dress
+is golden bronze; its eyes are coral red.  It carries a naked
+sword, that is to say, the sheath of its drill stands out slantwise
+at the tip of its belly, instead of lying in a hollow groove along
+the back, as it does with the Leucospis.  This scabbard holds the
+latter half of the inoculating filament, which extends below the
+animal to the base of the abdomen.  In short, its utensil is that
+of the Leucospis, with this difference, that its lower half sticks
+out like a rapier.
+
+This mite that bears a sword upon her rump is yet another
+persecutor of the mason bees and not one of the least formidable.
+She exploits their nests at the same time as the Leucospis.  I see
+her, like the Leucospis, slowly explore the ground with her
+antennae; I see her, like the Leucospis, bravely drive her dagger
+into the stone wall.  More taken up with her work, less conscious
+perhaps of danger, she pays no heed to the man who is observing her
+so closely.  Where the Leucospis flies, she does not budge.  So
+great is her assurance that she comes right into my study, to my
+work table, and disputes my ownership of the nests whose occupants
+I am examining.  She operates under my lens, she operates just
+beside my forceps.  What risk does she run?  What can one do to a
+thing so very small?  She is so certain of her safety that I can
+take the Mason's nest in my hand, move it, put it down and take it
+up again without the insect's raising any objection: it continues
+its work even when my magnifying glass is placed over it.
+
+One of these heroines has come to inspect a nest of the
+Chalicodoma of the Walls, most of whose cells are occupied by the
+numerous cocoons of a parasite, the Stelis.  The contents of these
+cells, which have been partially ripped up to satisfy my
+curiosity, are very much exposed to view.  The windfall appears to
+be appreciated, for I see the dwarf ferret about from cell to cell
+for four days on end, see her choose her cocoon and insert her awl
+in the most approved fashion.  I thus learn that sight, although
+an indispensable guide in searching, does not decide upon the
+proper spot for the operation.  Here is an insect exploring not
+the stony exterior of the mason's dwelling, but the surface of
+cocoons woven of silk.  The explorer has never found herself
+placed in such circumstances, nor has any of her race before her,
+every cocoon, under normal conditions, being protected by a
+surrounding wall.  No matter: despite the profound difference in
+the surfaces, the insect does not waver.  Warned by a special
+sense, an undecipherable riddle to ourselves, it knows that the
+object of its search lies hidden under this unfamiliar casing.
+The sense of smell has already been shown to be out of the
+question; that of sight is now eliminated in its turn.
+
+That she should bore through the cocoons of the Stelis, a parasite
+of the mason bee, does not surprise me at all: I know how
+indifferent my bold visitor is to the nature of the victuals
+destined for her family.  I have noticed her presence in the homes
+of bees differing greatly in size and habits: Anthophorae, Osmiae,
+Chalicodomae, Anthidia.  The Stelis exploited on my table is one
+victim more; and that is all.  The interest does not lie there.
+The interest lies in the maneuvers of the insect, which I am able
+to follow under the most favorable conditions.
+
+Bent sharply at right angles, like a couple of broken matches, the
+antennae feel the cocoon with their tips alone.  The terminal joint
+is the home of this strange sense which discerns from afar what no
+eye sees, no scent distinguishes and no ear hears.  If the point
+explored be found suitable, the insect hoists itself on tiptoe so
+as to give full scope to the play of its mechanism; it brings the
+tip of the belly a little forward; and the entire ovipositor--
+inoculating-needle and scabbard--stands perpendicular to the
+cocoon, in the center of the quadrilateral described by the four
+hind legs, an eminently favorable position for obtaining the
+maximum effect.  For some time, the whole of the awl bears on the
+cocoon, feeling all round with its point, groping about; then,
+suddenly, the boring needle is released from its sheath, which
+falls back along the body, while the needle strives to make its
+entrance.  The operation is a difficult one.  I see the insect make
+a score of attempts, one after the other, without succeeding in
+piercing the tough wrapper of the Stelis.  Should the instrument
+not penetrate, it retreats into its sheath and the insect resumes
+its scrutiny of the cocoon, sounding it point by point with the
+tips of its antennae.  Then further thrusts are tried until one
+succeeds.
+
+The eggs are little spindles, white and gleaming like ivory, about
+two-thirds of a millimeter in length.  They have not the long,
+curved peduncle of the Leucospis' eggs; they are not suspended from
+the ceiling of the cocoon like these, but are laid without order
+around the fostering larva.  Lastly, in a single cell and with a
+single mother, there is always more than one laying; and the number
+of eggs varies considerably in each.  The Leucospis, because of her
+great size, which rivals that of her victim, the Bee, finds in each
+cell provisions enough for one and one alone.  When, therefore,
+there is more than one set of eggs in any one cell, this is due to
+a mistake on her part and not a premeditated result.  Where the
+whole ration is required for the meals of a single grub, she would
+take good care not to install several if she could help it.  Her
+competitor is not called upon to observe the same discretion.  A
+Chalicodoma grub gives the dwarf the wherewithal to portion a score
+of her little ones, who will live in common and in all comfort on
+what a single son of the giantess would eat up by himself.  The
+tiny boring engineer, therefore, always settles a numerous family
+at the same banquet.  The bowl, ample for a dozen or two, is
+emptied in perfect harmony.
+
+Curiosity made me count the brood, to see if the mother was able to
+estimate the victuals and to proportion the number of guests to the
+sumptuousness of the fare provided.  My notes mention fifty-four
+larvae in the cell of a masked Anthophora (Anthophora personata).
+No other census attained this figure.  Possibly, two different
+mothers had laid their eggs in this crowded habitation.  With the
+Mason bee of the Walls, I see the number of larvae vary, in
+different cells, between four and twenty-six; with the mason bee of
+the Sheds, between five and thirty-six; with the three-horned
+Osmia, who supplied me with the largest number of records, between
+seven and twenty-five; with the blue Osmia (Osmia cyanea, KIRB.),
+between five and six; with the Stelis (Stelis nasuta), between four
+and twelve.
+
+The first return and the last two seem to point to some relation
+between the abundance of provisions and the number of consumers.
+When the mother comes upon the bountiful larva of the masked
+Anthophora, she gives it half-a-hundred to feed; with the Stelis
+and the blue Osmia, niggardly rations both, she contents herself
+with half-a-dozen.  To introduce into the dining room only the
+number of boarders that the bill of fare will allow would certainly
+be a most deserving performance, especially as the insect is placed
+under very difficult conditions to judge the contents of the cell.
+These contents, which lie hidden under the ceiling, are invisible;
+and the insect can derive its information only from the outside of
+the nest, which varies in the different species.  We should
+therefore have to admit the existence of a particular power of
+discrimination, a sort of discernment of the
+species, which is recognized as large or small from the outward
+aspect of its house.  I refuse to go to this length in my
+conjectures, not that instinct seems to me incapable of such feats,
+but because of the particulars obtained from the three-horned Osmia
+and the two mason bees.
+
+In the cells of these three species, I see the number of larvae put
+out to nurse vary in so elastic a fashion that I must abandon all
+idea of proportionate adjustment.  The mother, without troubling
+unduly whether there be an excess or a dearth of provisions for her
+family, has filled the cells as her fancy prompted, or rather
+according to the number of ripe ovules contained in her ovaries at
+the time of the laying.  If food be over-plentiful, the brood will
+be all the better for it and will grow bigger and stronger; if food
+be scarce, the famished youngsters will not die, but will remain
+smaller.  Indeed, with both the larva and the full grown insect, I
+have often observed a difference in size which varies according to
+the density of the population, the members of a small colony being
+double the size of their overcrowded neighbors.
+
+The grubs are white, tapering at both ends, sharply segmented and
+covered all over their bodies with a coat of fine, soft hairs which
+is invisible except under the lens.  The head consists of a little
+knob much smaller in diameter than the body.  In this head, the
+microscope reveals mandibles consisting of fine spikes of a tawny
+red, which spread into a wide, colorless base.  Deprived of any
+indentation, incapable of chewing anything between their awl-shaped
+ends, these two tools serve at best to fix the grub slightly at
+some point of the fostering larva.  Useless for carving, therefore,
+the mouth is a pure osculatory sucker, which drains the provisions
+by a process of exudation through the skin.  We see here repeated
+what the Anthrax and the Leucospis have already shown us: the
+gradual exhaustion of a victim which the parasite consumes without
+killing it.
+
+It is a curious spectacle even after that of the Anthrax.  We have
+here twenty or thirty starvelings, all with their mouths pressed,
+as for a kiss, to the body of the plump larva, which, from day to
+day, fades and shrinks without the least appreciable wound, thus
+keeping fresh until reduced to a shriveled slough.  If I disturb
+the gluttonous swarm, all, with a sudden recoil, let go, drop off
+and flounder around the foster mother.  They are no less prompt in
+resuming their savage kisses.  I need not add that neither at the
+point where they leave off nor at the point where they recommence
+is there the faintest trace of liquid.  The oily exudation occurs
+only when the pump is at work.  To linger over this strange method
+of feeding is superfluous after what I have said about the Anthrax.
+
+The appearance of the full grown insect takes place at the
+beginning of summer, after nearly a whole year's stay in the
+invaded dwelling.  The large number of inhabitants of one and the
+same cell led me to think that the work of deliverance ought to
+present a certain interest.  They are all equally anxious to clear
+the walls of the prison at the earliest possible moment and to come
+forth into the great festival of the sun: do they all at the same
+time, in a confused horde, attack the ceiling which has to be
+pierced?  Is the work of deliverance arranged in the general
+interest?  Or is individual selfishness the only rule?  These are
+the questions which observation will answer.
+
+A little in advance of the proper season, I transfer each family
+into a short glass tube, which will represent the natal cell.  A
+good, thick cork, quite a centimeter deep, is the obstacle to be
+pierced for an outlet.  Well, instead of the mad haste and the
+ruinous lack of organization which I expected to find, my broods
+show me in their glass prison an exceedingly well regulated
+workshop.  One insect, one only, works at perforating the cork.
+Patiently, with its mandibles, grain by grain, it digs a tunnel the
+width of its body.  The gallery is so narrow that, in order to
+return to the tube, the worker has to move backwards.  It is a slow
+process; and it takes hours and hours to dig the hole, a hard job
+for the frail miner.
+
+Should her fatigue become too great, the excavator leaves the
+forefront and mingles with the crowd, to polish and dust herself.
+Another, the first neighbor at hand, at once takes her place and is
+herself relieved by a third when her task is done.  Others again
+take their turn, always one at a time, so much so that the works
+are never at a standstill and never overcrowded.  Meanwhile, the
+multitude keeps out of the way, quietly and patiently.  There is no
+anxiety as to the deliverance.  Success will come: of that they are
+all convinced.  While waiting, one washes her antennae by passing
+them through her mouth, another polishes her wings with her hind
+legs, another frisks about to while away the period of inaction.
+Some are making love, a sovran means of killing time, whether one
+be born that day or twenty years ago.
+
+Some, I said, make love.  These favored ones are rare; they hardly
+count.  Is it through indifference?  No, but the gallants are
+lacking.  The sexes are very unequally represented in the
+population of a cell: the males are in a wretched minority and
+sometimes even completely absent.  This poverty did not escape the
+older observers.  Brulle [Gaspard August Bru11e (1809-1873)], the
+author of many works on natural history and one of the founders of
+the Societe entomologique de France), the only author whom I am
+able to consult in my hermitage, says, literally: 'The males do not
+appear to be known.'
+
+I, for my part, know them; but, considering their feeble number, I
+keep asking myself what part they play in a harem so
+disproportionate to their forces.  A few figures will show us what
+my hesitations are based upon.
+
+In twenty-two Osmia cocoons (Osmia tricornis), the total census of
+the inmates yields three hundred and fifty-four, of whom forty-
+seven are males and three hundred and seven females.  The average
+number of inmates, therefore, is sixteen individuals; and there are
+six females at least to one male.  This disparity is maintained, in
+more or less marked proportions, whatever the species of the bee
+invaded.  In the cocoons of the Mason bee of the Sheds, I discover
+the average proportion to be six females to one male; in those of
+the Mason bee of the Walls, I find one male to fifteen females.
+
+These facts, which I am unable to state with any greater precision,
+are enough to give rise to the suspicion that the males, who are
+even tinier dwarfs than the females and who, moreover, like all
+insects, are injured by a single act of pairing, must, in most
+cases, remain strangers to the females.  Can the mothers, in fact,
+dispense with their assistance, without being deprived of offspring
+on that account?  I do not say yes, but I do not say no.  The
+duality of the sexes is a hard problem.  Why two sexes?  Why not
+just one?  It would have been much simpler and saved a great deal
+of foolery.  Why such a thing as sex, when the tuber of the
+Jerusalem artichoke can do without it?  These are the pregnant
+questions suggested to me, in the end, by Monodontomerus cupreus,
+the insect so infinitesimal in body and so overpowering in name
+that I had really vowed never to speak of it again by its official
+designation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV  LARVAL DIMORPHISM
+
+If the reader has paid any attention to the story of the Anthrax,
+he must have perceived that my narrative is incomplete.  The fox in
+the fable saw how the lion's visitors entered his den, but did not
+see how they went out.  With us, it is the converse: we know the
+way out of the mason bee's fortress, but we do not know the way in.
+To leave the cell of which he has eaten the owner, the Anthrax
+becomes a perforating machine, a living tool from which our own
+industry might take a hint if it required new drills for boring
+rocks.  When the exit tunnel is opened, this tool splits like a pod
+bursting in the sun; and from the stout framework there escapes a
+dainty fly, a velvety flake, a soft fluff that astounds us by its
+contrast with the roughness of the depths whence it ascends.  On
+this point, we know pretty well what there is to know.  There
+remains the entrance into the cell, a puzzle that has kept me on
+the alert for a quarter of a century.
+
+To begin with, it is evident that the mother cannot lodge her egg
+in the cell of the mason bee, which has been long closed and
+barricaded with a cement wall by the time that the Anthrax makes
+her appearance.  To penetrate it, she would have to become an
+excavating tool once more and resume the cast-off rags which she
+left behind in the exit window; she would have to retrace her
+steps, to be reborn a pupa; and life knows none of these
+retrogressions.  The full grown insect, if endowed with claws,
+mandibles and plenty of perseverance, might at a pinch force the
+mortar casket; but the fly is not so endowed.  Her slender legs
+would be strained and deformed by merely sweeping away a little
+dust; her mouth is a sucker for gathering the sugary exudations of
+the flowers and not the solid pincers needed for the crumbling of
+cement.  There is no auger either, no bore copied from that of the
+Leucospis, no implement of any kind that can work its way into the
+thickness of the wall and dispatch the egg to its destination.  In
+short, the mother is absolutely incapable of settling her eggs in
+the chamber of the Mason bee.
+
+Can it be the grub that makes its own way into the storeroom, that
+same grub which we have seen draining the Chalicodoma with its
+leech-like kisses?  Let us call the creature to mind: a little oily
+sausage, which stretches and curls up just where it lies, without
+being able to shift its position.  Its body is a smooth cylinder;
+its mouth simply a circular lip.  Not one ambulatory organ does it
+possess; not even hairs, protuberances or wrinkles to enable it to
+crawl.  The animal is made for digestion and immobility.  Its
+organization is incompatible with movement; everything tells us so
+in the clearest fashion.  No, this grub is even less able than the
+mother to make its way unaided into the mason's dwelling.  And yet
+the provisions are there; those provisions must be reached: it is a
+matter of life or death; to be or not to be.  Then how does the fly
+set about it?  It would be vain for me to question probabilities,
+too often illusory; to obtain a reply of any value, I have but one
+resource; I must attempt the nearly impossible and watch the
+Anthrax from the egg onwards.
+
+Although Anthrax flies are fairly common, in the sense of there
+being several different species, they are not plentiful when it is
+a case of wanting a colony populous enough to admit of continuous
+observation.  I see them, now here, now there, in the fiercely sun-
+scorched places, flitting hither and thither on the old walls, the
+slopes and the sand, sometimes in small platoons, most often
+singly.  I can expect nothing of those vagabonds, who are here
+today and gone tomorrow, for I know nothing of their settlements.
+To keep a watch on them, one by one, in the blazing heat, is very
+painful and very unfruitful, as the swift-winged insect has a habit
+of disappearing one knows not whither just when a prospect of
+capturing its secret begins to offer.  I have wasted many a patient
+hour at this pursuit, without the least result.
+
+There might be some chance of success with Anthrax flies whose home
+was known to us beforehand, especially if insects of the same
+species formed a pretty numerous colony.  The inquiries begun with
+one would be continued with a second and with more, until a
+complete verdict was forthcoming.  Now, in the course of my long
+entomological career, I have met with but two species of Anthrax
+that fulfilled this condition and were to be found regularly: one
+at Carpentras; the other at Serignan.  The first, Anthrax sinuata,
+FALLEN, lives in the cocoons of Osmia tricornis, who herself builds
+her nest in the old galleries of the hairy-footed Anthophora; the
+second, Anthrax trifasciata, MEIGEN, exploits the Chalicodoma of
+the Sheds.  I will consult both.
+
+Once more, here am I, somewhat late in life, at Carpentras, whose
+rude Gallic name sets the fool smiling and the scholar thinking.
+Dear little town where I spent my twentieth year and left the first
+bits of my fleece upon life's bushes, my visit of today is a
+pilgrimage; I have come to lay my eyes once more upon the place
+which saw the birth of the liveliest impressions of my early days.
+I bow, in passing, to the old college where I tried my prentice
+hand as a teacher.  Its appearance is unchanged; it still looks
+like a penitentiary.  Those were the views of our mediaeval
+educational system.  To the gaiety and activity of boyhood, which
+were considered unwholesome, it applied the remedy of narrowness,
+melancholy and gloom.  Its houses of instruction were, above all,
+houses of correction.  The freshness of Virgil was interpreted in
+the stifling atmosphere of a prison.  I catch a glimpse of a yard
+between four high walls, a sort of bear pit, where the scholars
+fought for room for their games under the spreading branches of a
+plane tree.  All around were cells that looked like horse boxes,
+without light or air; those were the classrooms.  I speak in the
+past tense, for doubtless the present day has seen the last of this
+academic destitution.
+
+Here is the tobacco shop where, on Wednesday evening, coming out of
+the college, I would buy on credit the wherewithal to fill my pipe
+and thus to celebrate on the eve the joys of the morrow, that
+blessed Thursday [the weekly half-holiday in French schools] which
+I considered so well employed in solving hard equations,
+experimenting with new chemical reagents, collecting and
+identifying my plants.  I would make my timid request, pretending
+to have come out without my money, for it is hard for a self-
+respecting man to admit that he is penniless.  My candor appears to
+have inspired some little confidence; and I obtained credit, an
+unprecedented thing, with the representative of the revenue.  [The
+government in France has the sole control of the tobacco trade,
+which forms an important branch of the inland revenue.] Ah, why did
+not I open a shop and expose for sale some packets of candles, a
+dozen dried cod, a barrel of sardines and a few cakes of soap! I am
+no more of a fool nor any less industrious than another; and I
+should have made my way.  But, as it was, what could I expect?  As
+an accoucheur of brains, a molder of intellects, I had no claim
+even to bread and cheese.
+
+Here is my former habitation, occupied since by droning monks.  In
+the embrasure of that window, sheltered from profane hands, between
+the closed outer shutters and the panes, I used to keep my
+chemicals, bought for a few sous cheated out of the weekly budget
+in the early days of our housekeeping.  The bowl of a pipe was my
+crucible, a sweet jar my retort, mustard pots my receptacles for
+oxides and sulfides.  My experiments, harmless or dangerous, were
+made on a corner of the fire beside the simmering broth.
+
+How I should love to see that room again where I pored over
+differentials and integrals, where I calmed my poor burning head by
+gazing at Mont Ventoux, whose summit held in store for my coming
+expedition' those denizens of arctic climes, the saxifrage and the
+poppy! And to see my familiar friend, the blackboard which I hired
+at five francs a year from a crusty joiner, that board whose value
+I paid many times over, though I.  could never buy it outright, for
+want of the necessary cash! The conic sections which I described on
+that blackboard, the learned hieroglyphics!
+
+Though all my efforts, which were the more deserving because I had
+to work alone, led to almost nothing in that congenial calling, I
+would begin it all over again if I could.  I should love to be
+conversing for the first time with Leibnitz and Newton, with
+Laplace and Lagrange,  with Cuvier and Jussieu, even if I had
+afterwards to solve that other arduous problem: how to procure
+one's daily bread.  Ah, young men, my successors, what an easy time
+you have of it today! If you don't know it, then let me tell you so
+by means of these few pages from the life of one of your elders.
+
+But let us not forget our insects, while listening to the echoes of
+illusions and difficulties roused in my memories by the cupboard
+window and the hired blackboard.  Let us go back to the sunken
+roads of the Legue, which have become classic, so they say, since
+the appearance of my notes on the Oil beetles.  Ye illustrious
+ravines, with your sun-baked slopes, if I have contributed a little
+to your fame, you, in your turn, have given me many fair hours of
+forgetfulness in the happiness of learning.  You, at least, did not
+lure me with vain hopes; all that you promised you gave me and
+often a hundredfold.  You are my promised land, where I would have
+sought at the last to pitch my observer's tent.  My wish was not to
+be realized.  Let me, at least, in passing, greet my beloved
+animals of the old days.
+
+I raise my hat to Cerceris tuberculata, whom I see engaged on that
+slant, storing her Cleonus [a large species of weevil].  As I saw
+her then, so I see her now: the same staggering attempts to hoist
+the prey to the mouth of the burrow; the same brawls between males
+watching in the brushwood of the kermes oak.  The sight of them
+sends a younger blood coursing through my veins; I receive as it
+were the breath of a new springtime of life.  Time presses; let us
+pass on.
+
+Another bow on this side.  I hear buzzing up above, on that ledge,
+a colony of Sphex wasps, stabbing their crickets.  We will give
+them a friendly glance, but no more.  My acquaintances here are too
+numerous; I have not the leisure to renew my former relations with
+all of them.  Without stopping, a wave of the hat to the Philanthi
+[bee-hunting wasps] who send the long avalanches of rubbish
+streaming down from their nests; and to Stizus ruficornis, [a
+hunting wasp] who stacks her praying mantises between two flakes of
+sandstone; and to the silky Ammophila [a digger wasp] with the red
+legs, who collects an underground store of loopers [also known as
+measuring worms, the larvae or caterpillars of the geometrid moth]
+and to the Tachtyti [hunting wasps], devourers of locusts; and to
+the Eumenes, builders of clay cupolas on a bough.
+
+Here we are at last.  This high, perpendicular rock, facing the
+south to a length of some hundreds of yards and riddled with holes
+like a monstrous sponge, is the time-honored dwelling place of the
+hairy-footed Anthophora and of her rent free tenant, the three-
+horned Osmia.  Here also swarm their exterminators: the Sitaris
+beetle, the parasite of the Anthophora; the Anthrax fly, the
+murderer of the Osmia.  Ill informed as to the proper period, I
+have come rather late, on the 10th of September.  I should have
+been here a month ago, or even by the end of July, to watch the
+fly's operations.  My journey threatens to be fruitless: I see but
+a few rare Anthrax flies, hovering round the face of the cliff.  We
+will not despair, however, and we will begin by consulting the
+locality.
+
+The Anthophora's cells contain this bee in the larval stage.  Some
+of them provide me with the oil beetle and the Sitaris, rare finds
+at one time, today of no use to me.  Others contain the Melecta [a
+parasitic bee] in the form of a highly colored pupa, or even in
+that of the full grown insect.  The Osmia, still more precocious,
+though dating from the same period, shows herself exclusively in
+the adult form, a bad omen for my investigations, for what the
+Anthrax demands is the larva and not the perfect insect.  The fly's
+grub doubles my apprehensions.  Its development is complete, the
+larva on which it feeds is consumed, perhaps several weeks ago.  I
+no longer doubt but that I have come too late to see what happens
+in the Osmia's cocoons.
+
+Is the game lost?  Not yet.  My notes contain evidence of Anthrax
+flies hatching in the latter half of September.  Besides, those
+whom I now see exploring the rock are not there to take exercise:
+their preoccupation is the settling of the family.  These belated
+ones cannot tackle the Osmia, who, with her firm, adult flesh,
+would not suit the nursling's delicate needs and who, moreover,
+powerful as she is, would offer resistance.  But in autumn a less
+numerous colony of honey gatherers takes the place, upon the
+slope, of the spring colony, from which it differs in species.  In
+particular, I see the Diadem Anthidium [a clothier bee who lines
+her nest with wool and cotton] at work, entering her galleries at
+one time with her harvest of pollen dust and at another with her
+little bale of cotton.  Might not these autumnal Bees be
+themselves exploited by the Anthrax, the same that selected the
+Osmia as her victim a couple of months earlier?  This would
+explain the presence of the Anthrax flies whom I now see fussing
+about.
+
+A little reassured by this conjecture, I take my stand at the foot
+of the rock, under a broiling sun; and, for half a day, I follow
+the evolutions of my flies.  They flit quietly in front of the
+slope, at a few inches from the earthy covering.  They go from one
+orifice to the next, but without even penetrating.  For that
+matter, their big wings, extended crosswise even when at rest,
+would resist their entrance into a gallery, which is too narrow to
+admit those spreading sails.  And so they explore the cliff, going
+to and fro and up and down, with a flight that is now sudden, now
+smooth and slow.  From time to time, I see the Anthrax quickly
+approach the wall and lower her abdomen as though to touch the
+earth with the end of her ovipositor.  This proceeding takes no
+longer than the twinkling of an eye.  When it is done, the insect
+alights elsewhere and rests.  Then it resumes its sober
+flight, its long investigations and its sudden blows with the tip
+of its belly against the layer of earth.  The Bombylii [bee flies]
+observe similar tactics when soaring at a short height above the
+ground.
+
+I at once rushed to the spot touched, lens in hand, in the hope of
+finding the egg which everything told me was laid during that tap
+of the abdomen.  I could distinguish nothing, in spite of the
+closest attention.  It is true that my exhaustion, together with
+the blinding light and scorching heat, made examination very
+difficult.  Afterwards, when I made the acquaintance of the tiny
+thing that issues from that egg, my failure no longer surprised me.
+In the leisure of my study, with my eyes rested and with my most
+powerful glasses held in a hand no longer shaking with excitement
+and fatigue, I have the very greatest difficulty in finding the
+infinitesimal creature, though I know exactly where it lies.  Then
+how could I see the egg, worn out as I was under the sun-baked
+cliff, how discover the precise spot of a laying performed in a
+moment by an insect seen only at a distance?  In the painful
+conditions wherein I found myself, failure was inevitable.
+
+Despite my negative attempts, therefore, I remain convinced that
+the Anthrax flies strew their eggs one by one, on the spots
+frequented by those bees who suit their grubs.  Each of their
+sudden strokes with the tip of the abdomen represents a laying.
+They take no precaution to place the germ under cover; for that
+matter, any such precaution would be rendered impossible by the
+mother's structure.  The egg, that delicate object, is laid roughly
+in the blazing sun, between grains of sand, in some wrinkle of the
+calcined chalk.  That summary installation is sufficient, provided
+the coveted larva be near at hand.  It is for the young grub now to
+manage as best it can at its own risk and peril.
+
+Though the sunken roads of the Legue did not tell me all that I
+wished to know, they at least made it very probable that the coming
+grub must reach the victualled cell by its own efforts.  But the
+grub which we know, the one that drains the bag of fat which may be
+a Chalicodoma larva or an Osmia larva, cannot move from its place,
+still less indulge in journeys of discovery through the thickness
+of a wall and the web of a cocoon.  So an imperative necessity
+presents itself: there must perforce be an initial larva form,
+capable of moving and organized for searching, a form under which
+the grub would attain its end.  The Anthrax would thus possess two
+larval states: one to penetrate to the provisions; the other to
+consume them.  I allow myself to be convinced by the logic of it
+all; I already see in my mind's eye the wee animal coming out of
+the egg, endowed with sufficient power of motion not to dread a
+walk and with sufficient slenderness to glide into the smallest
+crevices.  Once in the presence of the larva on which it is to
+feed, it doffs its travelling dress and becomes the obese animal
+whose one duty it is to grow big and fat in immobility.  This is
+all very coherent; it is all deduced like a geometrical
+proposition.  But to the wings of imagination, however smooth their
+flight, we must prefer the sandals of observed facts, the slow
+sandals with the leaden soles.  Thus shod, I proceed.
+
+Next year, I resume my investigations, this time on the Anthrax of
+the Chalicodoma, who is my neighbor in the surrounding wastelands
+and will allow me to repeat my visits daily, morning and evening if
+need be.  Taught by my earlier studies, I now know the exact period
+of the Bee's hatching and therefore of the Anthrax' laying, which
+must take place soon after.  Anthrax trifasciata settles her family
+in July, or in August at latest.  Every morning, at nine o'clock,
+when the heat begins to be unendurable and when, to use [the
+author's gardener and factotum] Favier's expression, an extra log
+is flung on the bonfire of the sun, I take the field, prepared to
+come back with my head aching from the glare, provided that I bring
+home the solution of my puzzle.  A man must have the devil in him
+to leave the shade at this time of the year.  And what for, pray?
+To write the story of a fly! The greater the heat, the better my
+chance of success.  What causes me to suffer torture fills the
+insect with delight; what prostrates me braces the fly.  Come
+along!
+
+The road shimmers like a sheet of molten steel.  From the dusty and
+melancholy olive trees rises a mighty, throbbing hum, a great
+andante whose executants have the whole sweep of woods for their
+orchestra.  'Tis the concert of the Cicada, whose bellies sway and
+rustle with increasing frenzy as the temperature rises.  The
+strident scrapings of the Cicada of the Ash, the Carcan of the
+district, lend their rhythm to the one note symphony of the common
+cicada.  This is the moment: come along! And, for five or six
+weeks, oftenest in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, I set
+myself to explore the flinty plateau.
+
+The Chalicodoma's nests abound, but I cannot see a single Anthrax
+make a black speck upon their surface.  Not one, busy with her
+laying, settles in front of me.  At most, from time to time, I can
+just see one passing far away, with an impetuous rush.  I lose her
+in the distance; and that is all.  It is impossible to be present
+at the laying of the egg.  I know the little that I learnt from the
+cliffs in the Legue and nothing more.
+
+As soon as I recognize the difficulty, I hasten to enlist
+assistants.  Shepherds--mere small boys--keep the sheep in these
+stony meadows, where the flocks graze, to the greater glory of our
+local mutton, on the camphor saturated badafo, that is to say,
+spike lavender.  I explain as well as I can the object of my
+search; I talk to them of a big black Fly and the nests on which
+she ought to settle, the clay nests so well known to those who have
+learnt how to extract the honey with a straw in springtime and
+spread it on a crust of bread.  They are to watch that fly and take
+good note of the nests on which they may see her alight; and, on
+the same evening, when they bring their flocks back to the village,
+they are to tell me the result of their day's work.  On receiving
+their favorable report, I will go with them, next day, to continue
+the observations.  They shall be paid for their trouble, of course.
+These latter day Corydons have not the manners of antiquity: they
+reck little of the seven holed flute cemented with wax, or of the
+beechen bowl, preferring the coppers that will take them to the
+village inn on Sunday.  A reward in ready money is promised for
+each nest that fulfils the desired conditions; and the bargain is
+enthusiastically accepted.
+
+There are three of them; and I make a fourth.  Shall we manage it,
+among us all?  I thought so.  By the end of August, however, my
+last illusions were dispelled.  Not one of us had succeeded in
+seeing the big black Fly perching on the dome of the mason bee.
+
+Our failure, it seems to me, can be explained thus: outside the
+spacious front of the Anthophora's settlement, the Anthrax is in
+permanent residence.  She visits, on the wing, every nook and
+corner, without moving away from the native cliff, because it would
+be useless to go farther.  There is board and lodging here,
+indefinitely, for all her family.  When some spot is deemed
+favorable, she hovers round inspecting it, then comes up suddenly
+and strikes it with the tip of her abdomen.  The thing is done, the
+egg is laid.  So I picture it, at least.  Within a radius of a few
+yards and in a flight broken by short intervals of rest in the sun,
+she carries on her search of likely places for the laying and
+dissemination of her eggs.  The insect's assiduous attendance upon
+the same slope is caused by the inexhaustible wealth of the
+locality exploited.
+
+The Anthrax of the Chalicodoma labors under very different
+conditions.  Stay-at-home habits would be detrimental to her.  With
+her rushing flight, made easy by the long and powerful spread of
+her wings, she must travel far and wide if she would found a
+colony.  The bee's nests are not discovered in groups, but occur
+singly on their pebbles, scattered more or less everywhere over
+acres of ground.  To find a single one is not enough for the fly:
+on account of the many parasites, not all the cells, by a long way,
+contain the desired larva; others, too well protected, would not
+allow of access to the provisions.  Very many nests are necessary,
+perhaps, for the eggs of one alone; and the finding of them calls
+for long journeys.
+
+I therefore picture the Anthrax coming and going in every direction
+across the stony plain.  Her practiced eye requires no slackened
+flight to distinguish the earthen dome which she is seeking.
+Having found it, she inspects it from above, still on the wing; she
+taps it once and yet once again with the tip of her ovipositor and
+forthwith makes off, without having set foot on the ground.  Should
+she take a rest, it will be elsewhere, no matter where, on the
+soil, on a stone, on a tuft of lavender or thyme.  Given these
+habits--and my observations in the Carpentras roads make them seem
+exceedingly probable--it is small wonder that the perspicacity of
+my young shepherds and myself should have come to naught.  I was
+expecting the impossible: the Anthrax does not halt on the mason
+bee's nest to proceed with her laying in a methodical fashion; she
+merely pays a flying visit.
+
+And so I develop my theory of a primary larval form, differing in
+every way from the one which I know.  The organization of the
+Anthrax must be such, at the beginning, as to permit of its moving
+on the surface of the dome where the egg has been dropped so
+carelessly; the nascent grub must be supplied with tools to pierce
+the concrete wall and enter the Bee's cell through some cranny.
+The fly grub, perhaps dragging the remnants of the egg behind it,
+must set out in quest of board and lodging almost as soon as it is
+born.  It will succeed under the guidance of instinct, that faculty
+which waits not to number the days and which is as far seeing at
+the moment of hatching as after the trials of a busy life.  This
+primary grub does not seem to me outside the limits of possibility;
+I see it, if not in the body, at least in its actions, as plainly
+as though it were really under the lens.  It exists, if reason be
+not a vain and empty guide; I must find it; I shall find it.  Never
+in the history of my investigations has the logic of things been
+more insistent; never has it directed me with greater certainty
+towards a magnificent biological theory.
+
+While vainly trying to witness the laying of the eggs, I inquire,
+at the same time, into the contents of the Mason bee's nests, in
+quest of the grub just issued from the egg.  My own harvest and
+that of my young shepherds, whose zeal I employ in a task less
+difficult than the first, procure me heaps of nests, enough to fill
+baskets and baskets.  These are all inspected at leisure, on my
+work table, with the excitement which the certainty of an
+approaching fine discovery never fails to give.  The Mason's
+cocoons are taken from the cells, inspected without, opened and
+inspected within.  My lens explores their innermost recesses; speck
+by speck, it explores the Chalicodoma's slumbering larva; it
+explores the inner walls of the cells.  Nothing, nothing, nothing!
+For a fortnight and more, nests were rejected and heaped up in a
+corner; my study was crammed with them.  What hecatombs of
+unfortunate sleepers removed from their silken bags and doomed, for
+the most part, to a wretched end, despite the care which I took to
+put them in a place of safety, where the work of the transformation
+might be pursued! Curiosity makes us cruel.  I continue to rip up
+cocoons.  And nothing, nothing! It needed the sturdiest faith to
+make me persevere.  That faith I possessed; and well for me that I
+did.
+
+On the 25th of July--the date deserves to be recorded--I saw, or
+rather seemed to see, something move on the Chalicodoma's larva.
+Was it an illusion born of my hopes?  Was it a bit of diaphanous
+down stirred by my breath?  It was not an illusion, it was not a
+bit of down, it was really and truly a grub.  What a moment,
+followed by what perplexities! The thing has nothing in common with
+the larva of the Anthrax, it suggests rather some microscopic
+Thread worm that, by accident, has made its way through the skin of
+its host and come to enjoy itself outside.  I do not reckon my
+discovery as of much value, because I am so greatly puzzled by the
+creature's appearance.  No matter: we will take a small glass tube
+and place inside it the Chalicodoma grub and the mysterious thing
+wriggling on the surface.  Suppose it should be what I am looking
+for?  Who knows?
+
+Once warned of the probable difficulty of seeing the animalcule for
+which I am hunting, I redouble my attention, so much so that, in a
+couple of days, I am the owner of half a score of tiny worms
+similar to the one which caused me such excitement.  Each of them
+is lodged in a glass tube with its Chalicodoma grub.  The
+infinitesimal thing is so small, so diaphanous, blends to such good
+purpose with its host that the least fold of skin conceals it from
+my view.  After watching it one day through the lens, I sometimes
+fail to find it again on the morrow.  I think that I have lost it,
+that it has perished under the weight of the overturned larva and
+returned to that nothing to which it was so closely akin.  Then it
+moves and I see it again.  For a whole fortnight, there was no
+limit to my perplexity.  Was it really the original larva of the
+Anthrax?  Yes, for I at last saw my bantlings transform themselves
+into the larva previously described and make their first start at
+draining their victims with kisses.  A few moments of satisfaction
+like those which I then enjoyed make up for many a weary hour.
+
+Let us resume the story of the wee animal, now recognized as the
+genuine origin of the Anthrax.  It is a tiny worm about a
+millimeter long and almost as slender as a hair.  It is very
+difficult to see because of its transparency.  When tucked away in
+a fold of the skin of its fostering larva, an excessively fine
+skin, it remains undiscoverable to the lens.  But the feeble
+creature is very active: it tramps over the sides of the rich
+morsel, walks all round it.  It covers the ground pretty quickly,
+buckling and unbuckling by turns, very much after the manner of the
+looper caterpillar.  Its two extremities are its chief points of
+support.  When at a standstill, it moves its front half in every
+direction, as though to explore the space around it; when walking,
+it swells out, magnifies its segments and then looks like a bit of
+knotted string.
+
+The microscope shows us thirteen rings, including the head.  This
+head is small, slightly horny, as is proved by its amber color, and
+bristles in front with a small number of short, stiff hairs.  On
+each of the three segments of the thorax there are two long hairs,
+fixed to the lower surface; and there are two similar and still
+longer hairs at the end of the terminal ring.  These four pairs of
+bristles, three in front and one behind, are the locomotory organs,
+to which we must add the hairy edge of the head and also the anal
+button, a sustaining base which might very well work with the aid
+of a certain stickiness, as happens with the primary larva of the
+Sitaris [a Parasitic Beetle noted for the multiplicity of
+transformations undergone by the grub].  We see, through the
+transparent skin, two long air tubes running parallel to each other
+from the first thoracic segment to the last abdominal segment but
+one.  They ought to end in two pairs of breathing holes which I
+have not succeeded in distinguishing quite plainly.  Those two big
+respiratory vessels are characteristic of the grubs of flies.
+Their mouths correspond exactly with the points at which the two
+sets of stigmata open in the Anthrax larva in its second form.
+
+For a fortnight, the feeble grub remains in the condition which I
+have described, without growing and very probably also without
+nourishment.  Assiduous though my visits be, I never perceive it
+taking any refreshment.  Besides, what would it eat?  In the cocoon
+invaded there is nothing but the larva of the mason bee; and the
+worm cannot make use of this before acquiring the sucker that comes
+with the second form.  Nevertheless, this life of abstinence is not
+a life of idleness.  The animalcule explores its dish, now here,
+now elsewhere; it runs all over it with looper strides; it pries
+into the neighborhood by lifting and shaking its head.
+
+I see a need for this long wait under a transitory form that
+requires no feeding.  The egg is laid by the mother on the surface
+of the nest, somewhere near a suitable cell, I dare say, but still
+at a distance from the fostering larva, which is protected by a
+thick rampart.  It is for the new born grub to make its own way to
+the provisions, not by violence and house breaking, of which it is
+incapable, but by patiently slipping through a maze of cracks,
+first tried, then abandoned, then tried again.  It is a very
+difficult task, even for this most slender worm, for the bee's
+masonry is exceedingly compact.  There are no chinks due to bad
+building; no fissures due to the weather; nothing but an apparently
+impenetrable homogeneity.  I see but one weak part and that only in
+a few nests: it is the line where the dome joins the surface of the
+stone.  An imperfect soldering between two materials of different
+nature, cement and flint, may leave a breach wide enough to admit
+besiegers as thin as a hair.  Nevertheless, the lens is far from
+always finding an inlet of this kind on the nests occupied by
+Anthrax flies.
+
+And so I am ready to allow that the animalcule wandering in search
+of its cell has the whole area of the dome at its disposal when
+selecting an entrance.  Where the line auger of the Leucospis can
+enter, is there not room enough for the even slimmer Anthrax grub?
+True, the Leucospis possesses muscular force and a hard boring
+tool.  The Anthrax is extremely weak and has nothing but invincible
+patience.  It does at great length of time what the other,
+furnished with superior implements, accomplishes in three hours.
+This explains the fortnight spent by the Anthrax under the initial
+form, the object of which is to overcome the obstacle of the
+mason's wall, to pierce through the texture of the cocoon and to
+reach the victuals.
+
+I even believe that it takes longer.  The work is so laborious and
+the worker so feeble! I cannot tell how long it is since my
+bantlings attained their object.  Perhaps, aided by easy roads,
+they had reached their fostering larvae long before the completion
+of their first babyhood, the end of which they were spending before
+my eyes, with no apparent purpose, in exploring their provisions.
+The time had not yet come for them to change their skins and take
+their seats at the table.  Their fellows must still, for the most
+part, be wandering through the pores of the masonry; and this was
+what made my search so vain at the start.
+
+A few facts seem to suggest that the entrance into the cell may be
+delayed for several months by the difficulty of the passages.
+There are a few Anthrax grubs beside the remains of pupae not far
+removed from the final metamorphosis; there are others, but very
+rarely, on Mason bees already in the perfect state.  These grubs
+are sickly and appear to be ailing; the provisions are too solid
+and do not lend themselves to the delicate suckling of the worms.
+Who can these laggards be but animalcules that have roamed too long
+in the walls of the nest?  Failing to make their entrance at the
+proper time, they no longer find viands to suit them.  The primary
+larva of the Sitaris continues from the autumn to the following
+spring.  Even so the initial form of the Anthrax might well
+continue, not in inactivity, but in stubborn attempts to overcome
+the thick bulwark.
+
+My young worms, when transferred with their provisions into tubes,
+remained stationary, on the average, for a couple of weeks.  At
+last, I saw them shrink and then rid themselves of their epidermis
+and become the grub which I was so anxiously expecting as the final
+reply to all my doubts.  It was indeed, from the first, the grub of
+the Anthrax, the cream-colored cylinder with the little button of a
+head, followed by a hump.  Applying its cupping glass to the mason
+bee, the worm, without delay, began its meal, which lasts another
+fortnight.  The reader knows the rest.
+
+Before taking leave of the animalcule, let us devote a few lines to
+its instinct.  It has just awakened to life under the fierce kisses
+of the sun.  The bare stone is its cradle, the rough clay its
+welcomer, as it makes its entrance into the world, a poor thread of
+scarce cohering albumen.  But safety lies within; and behold the
+atom of animated glair embarking on its struggle with the flint.
+Obstinately, it sounds each pore; it slips in, crawls on, retreats,
+begins again.  The radical of the germinating seed is no more
+persevering in its efforts to descend into the cool earth than is
+the Anthrax grub in creeping into the lump of mortar.  What
+inspiration urges it towards its food at the bottom of the clod,
+what compass guides it?  What does it know of those depths, of what
+lies therein or where?  Nothing.  What does the root know of the
+earth's fruitfulness?  Again nothing.  Yet both make for the
+nourishing spot.  Theories are put forward, most learned theories,
+introducing capillary action, osmosis and cellular imbibition, to
+explain why the caulicle ascends and the radical descends.  Shall
+physical or chemical forces explain why the animalcule digs into
+the hard clay?  I bow profoundly, without understanding or even
+trying to understand.  The question is far above, our inane means.
+
+The biography of the Anthrax is now complete, save for the details
+relating to the egg, as yet unknown.  In the vast majority of
+insects subject to metamorphoses, the hatching yields the larval
+form which will remain unchanged until the nymphosis.  By virtue of
+a remarkable variation, revealing a new vein of observation to the
+entomologist, the Anthrax flies, in the larval state, assume two
+successive shapes, differing greatly one from the other, both in
+structure and in the part which they are called upon to play.  I
+will describe this double stage of the organism by the phrase
+'larval dimorphism.' The initial form, that issuing from the egg, I
+will call 'the primary larva;' the second form shall be 'the
+secondary larva.' Among the Anthrax flies, the function of the
+primary larva is to reach the provisions, on which the mother is
+unable to lay her egg.  It is capable of moving and endowed with
+ambulatory bristles, which allow the slim creature to glide through
+the smallest interstices in the wall of a Bee's nest, to slip
+through the woof of the cocoon and to make its way to the larva
+intended for its successor's food.  When this object is attained,
+its part is played.  Then appears the secondary larva, deprived of
+any means of progression.  Relegated to the inside of the invaded
+cell, as incapable of leaving it by its own efforts as it was of
+entering, this one has no mission in life but that of eating.  It
+is a stomach that loads itself, digests and goes on adding to its
+reserves.  Next comes the pupa, armed for the exit even as the
+primary larva was equipped for entering.  When the deliverance is
+accomplished, the perfect insect appears, busy with its laying.
+The Anthrax cycle is thus divided into four periods, each of which
+corresponds with special forms and functions.  The primary larva
+enters the casket containing provisions; the secondary larva
+consumes these provisions; the pupa brings the insect to light by
+boring through the enclosing wall; the perfect insect strews its
+eggs; and the cycle starts afresh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V  HEREDITY
+
+Facts which I have set forth elsewhere prove that certain dung
+beetles' make an exception to the rule of paternal indifference--a
+general rule in the insect world--and know something of domestic
+cooperation.  The father works with almost the same zeal as the
+mother in providing for the settlement of the family.  Whence do
+these favored ones derive a gift that borders on morality?
+
+One might suggest the cost of installing the youngsters.  Once they
+have to be furnished with a lodging and to be left the wherewithal
+to live, is it not an advantage, in the interests of the race, that
+the father should come to the mother's assistance?  Work divided
+between the two will ensure the comfort which solitary work, its
+strength overtaxed, would deny.  This seems excellent reasoning;
+but it is much more often contradicted than confirmed by the facts.
+Why is the Sisyphus a hard working paterfamilias and the sacred
+beetle an idle vagabond?  And yet the two pill rollers practice the
+same industry and the same method of rearing their young.  Why does
+the Lunary Copris know what his near kinsman, the Spanish Copris,
+does not?  The first assists his mate, never forsakes her.  The
+second seeks a divorce at an early stage and leaves the nuptial
+roof before the children's rations are massed and kneaded into
+shape.  Nevertheless, on both sides, there is the same big outlay
+on a cellarful of egg-shaped pills, whose neat rows call for long
+and watchful supervision.  The similarity of the produce leads one
+to believe in similarity of manners; and this is a mistake.
+
+Let us turn elsewhere, to the wasps and bees, who unquestionably
+come first in the laying up of a heritage for their offspring.
+Whether the treasure hoarded for the benefit of the sons be a pot
+of honey or a bag of game, the father never takes the smallest part
+in the work.  He does not so much as give a sweep of the broom when
+it comes to tidying the outside of the dwelling.  To do nothing is
+his invariable rule.  The bringing up of the family, therefore,
+however expensive it may be in certain cases, has not given rise to
+the instinct of paternity.  Then where are we to look for a reply?
+
+Let us make the question a wider one.  Let us leave the animal, for
+a moment, and occupy ourselves with man.  We have our own
+instincts, some of which take the name of genius when they attain a
+degree of might that towers over the plain of mediocrity.  We are
+amazed by the unusual, springing out of flat commonplaces; we are
+spellbound by the luminous speck shining in the wonted darkness.
+We admire; and, failing to understand whence came those glorious
+harvests in this one or in that, we say of them: "They have the
+gift."
+
+A goatherd amuses himself by making combinations with heaps of
+little pebbles.  He becomes an astoundingly quick and accurate
+reckoner without other aid than a moment's reflection.  He
+terrifies us with the conflict of enormous numbers which blend in
+an orderly fashion in his mind, but whose mere statement overwhelms
+us by its inextricable confusion.  This marvelous arithmetical
+juggler has an instinct, a genius, a gift for figures.
+
+A second, at the age when most of us delight in tops and marbles,
+leaves the company of his boisterous playmates and listens to the
+echo of celestial harps singing within him.  His head is a
+cathedral filled with the strains of an imaginary organ.  Rich
+cadences, a secret concert heard by him and him alone, steep him in
+ecstasy.  All hail to that predestined one who, some day, will
+rouse our noblest emotions with his musical chords.  He has an
+instinct, a genius, a gift for sounds.
+
+A third, a brat who cannot yet eat his bread and jam without
+smearing his face all over, takes a delight in fashioning clay into
+little figures that are astonishingly lifelike for all their
+artless awkwardness.  He takes a knife and makes the briar root
+grin into all sorts of entertaining masks; he carves boxwood in the
+semblance of a horse or sheep; he engraves the effigy of his dog on
+sandstone.  Leave him alone; and, if Heaven second his efforts, he
+may become a famous sculptor.  He has an instinct, a gift, a genius
+for form.
+
+And so with others in every branch of human activity: art and
+science, industry and commerce, literature and philosophy.  We have
+within us, from the start, that which will distinguish us from the
+vulgar herd.  Now to what do we owe this distinctive character?  To
+some throwback of atavism, men tell us.  Heredity, direct in one
+case, remote in another, hands it down to us, increased or modified
+by time.  Search the records of the family and you will discover
+the source of the genius, a mere trickle at first, then a stream,
+then a mighty river.
+
+The darkness that lies behind that word heredity! Metaphysical
+science has tried to throw a little light upon it and has succeeded
+only in making unto itself a barbarous jargon, leaving obscurity
+more obscure than before.  As for us, who hunger after lucidity,
+let us relinquish abstruse theories to whoever delights in them and
+confine our ambition to observable facts, without pretending to
+explain the quackery of the plasma.  Our method certainly will not
+reveal to us the origin of instinct; but it will at least show us
+where it would be waste of time to look for it.
+
+In this sort of research, a subject known through and through, down
+to its most intimate peculiarities, is indispensable.  Where shall
+we find that subject?  There would be a host of them and
+magnificent ones, if it were possible to read the sealed pages of
+others' lives; but no one can sound an existence outside his own
+and even then he can think himself lucky if a retentive memory and
+the habit of reflection give his soundings the proper accuracy.  As
+none of us is able to project himself into another's skin, we must
+needs, in considering this problem, remain inside our own.
+
+To talk about one's self is hateful, I know.  The reader must have
+the kindness to excuse me for the sake of the study in hand.  I
+shall take the silent beetle's place in the witness box, cross-
+examining myself in all simplicity of soul, as I do the animal, and
+asking myself whence that one of my instincts which stands out
+above the others is derived.
+
+
+Since Darwin bestowed upon me the title of 'incomparable observer,'
+the epithet has often come back to me, from this side and from
+that, without my yet understanding what particular merit I have
+shown.  It seems to me so natural, so much within everybody's
+scope, so absorbing to interest one's self in everything that
+swarms around us! However, let us pass on and admit that the
+compliment is not unfounded.
+
+My hesitation ceases if it is a question of admitting my curiosity
+in matters that concern the insect.  Yes, I possess the gift, the
+instinct that impels me to frequent that singular world; yes, I
+know that I am capable of spending on those studies an amount of
+precious time which would be better employed in making provision,
+if possible, for the poverty of old age; yes, I confess that I am
+an enthusiastic observer of the animal.  How was this
+characteristic propensity, at once the torment and delight of my
+life, developed?  And, to begin with, how much does it owe to
+heredity?
+
+The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they
+cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.  And yet what
+surpassingly instructive records, comforting too and pious, would
+be the family papers that should tell us who our forebears were and
+speak to us of their patient struggles with harsh fate, their
+stubborn efforts to build up, atom by atom, what we are today.  No
+story would come up with that for individual interest.  But by the
+very force of things the home is abandoned; and, when the brood has
+flown, the nest is no longer recognized.
+
+I, a humble journeyman in the toilers' hive, am therefore very poor
+in family recollections.  In the second degree of ancestry, my
+facts become suddenly obscured.  I will linger over them a moment
+for two reasons: first, to inquire into the influence of heredity;
+and, secondly, to leave my children yet one more page concerning
+them.
+
+I did not know my maternal grandfather.  This venerable ancestor
+was, I have been told, a process server in one of the poorest
+parishes of the Rouergue.  He used to engross on stamped paper in a
+primitive spelling.  With his well-filled pen case and ink horn, he
+went drawing out deeds up hill and down dale, from one insolvent
+wretch to another more insolvent still.  Amid his atmosphere of
+pettifoggery, this rudimentary scholar, waging battle on life's
+acerbities, certainly paid no attention to the insect; at most, if
+he met it, he would crush it under foot.  The unknown animal,
+suspected of evil doing, deserved no further enquiry.  Grandmother,
+on her side, apart from her housekeeping and her beads, knew still
+less about anything.  She looked on the alphabet as a set of
+hieroglyphics only fit to spoil your sight for nothing, unless you
+were scribbling on paper bearing the government stamp.  Who in the
+world, in her day, among the small folk, dreamt of knowing how to
+read and write?  That luxury was reserved for the attorney, who
+himself made but a sparing use of it.  The insect, I need hardly
+say, was the least of her cares.  If sometimes, when rinsing her
+salad at the tap, she found a caterpillar on the lettuce leaves,
+with a start of fright she would fling the loathsome thing away,
+thus cutting short relations reputed dangerous.  In short, to both
+my maternal grandparents, the insect was a creature of no interest
+whatever and almost always a repulsive object, which one dared not
+touch with the tip of one's finger.  Beyond a doubt, my taste for
+animals was not derived from them.
+
+I have more precise information regarding my grandparents on the
+father's side, for their green old age allowed me to know them
+both.  They were people of the soil, whose quarrel with the
+alphabet was so great that they had never opened a book in their
+lives; and they kept a lean farm on the cold granite ridge of the
+Rouergue tableland.  The house, standing alone among the heath and
+broom, with no neighbor for many a mile around and visited at
+intervals by the wolves, was to them the hub of the universe.  But
+for a few surrounding villages, whither the calves were driven on
+fair days, the rest was only very vaguely known by hearsay.  In
+this wild solitude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires oozing
+with iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal source of
+wealth, with rich, wet grass.  In summer, on the short swards of
+the slopes, the sheep were penned day and night, protected from
+beasts of prey by a fence of hurdles propped up with pitchforks.
+When the grass was cropped close at one spot, the fold was shifted
+elsewhere.  In the center was the shepherd's rolling hut, a straw
+cabin.  Two watchdogs, equipped with spiked collars, were
+answerable for tranquillity if the thieving wolf appeared in the
+night from out the neighboring woods.
+
+Padded with a perpetual layer of cow dung, in which I sank to my
+knees, broken up with shimmering puddles of dark brown liquid
+manure, the farmyard also boasted a numerous population.  Here the
+lambs skipped, the geese trumpeted, the fowls scratched the ground
+and the sow grunted with her swarm of little pigs hanging to her
+dugs.
+
+The harshness of the climate did not give husbandry the same
+chances.  In a propitious season, they would set fire to a stretch
+of moorland bristling with gorse and send the swing plow across the
+ground enriched with the cinders of the blaze.  This yielded a few
+acres of rye, oats and potatoes.  The best corners were kept for
+hemp, which furnished the distaffs and spindles of the house with
+the material for linen and was looked upon as grandmother's private
+crop.
+
+Grandfather, therefore, was, before all, a herdsman versed in
+matters of cows and sheep, but completely ignorant of aught else.
+How dumbfounded he would have been to learn that, in the remote
+future, one of his family would become enamoured of those
+insignificant animals to which he had never vouchsafed a glance in
+his life! Had he guessed that that lunatic was myself, the
+scapegrace seated at the table by his side, what a smack I should
+have caught in the neck, what a wrathful look!
+
+"The idea of wasting one's time with that nonsense!" he would have
+thundered.
+
+For the patriarch was not given to joking.  I can still see his
+serious face, his unclipped head of hair, often brought back behind
+his ears with a flick of the thumb and spreading its ancient Gallic
+mane over his shoulders.  I see his little three-cornered hat, his
+small clothes buckled at the knees, his wooden shoes, stuffed with
+straw, that echoed as he walked.  Ah, no! Once childhood's games
+were past, it would never have done to rear the Grasshopper and
+unearth the Dung beetle from his natural surroundings.
+
+Grandmother, pious soul, used to wear the eccentric headdress of
+the Rouergue highlanders: a large disk of black felt, stiff as a
+plank, adorned in the middle with a crown a finger's breadth high
+and hardly wider across than a six franc piece.  A black ribbon
+fastened under the chin maintained the equilibrium of this elegant,
+but unsteady circle.  Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey,
+butter; washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the
+meals of the household: say that and you have summed up the
+strenuous woman's round of ideas.  On her left side, the distaff,
+with its load of flax; in her right hand, the spindle turning under
+a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals with her tongue:
+so she went through life, unwearied, attending to the order and the
+welfare of the house.  I see her in my mind's eye particularly on
+winter evenings, which were more favorable to family talk.  When
+the hour came for meals, all of us, big and little, would take our
+seats round a long table, on a couple of benches, deal planks
+supported by four rickety legs.  Each found his wooden bowl and his
+tin spoon in front of him.  At one end of the table always stood an
+enormous rye loaf, the size of a cartwheel, wrapped in a linen
+cloth with a pleasant smell of washing, and remained until nothing
+was left of it.  With a vigorous stroke, grandfather would cut off
+enough for the needs of the moment; then he would divide the piece
+among us with the one knife which he alone was entitled to wield.
+It was now each one's business to break up his bit with his fingers
+and to fill his bowl as he pleased.
+
+Next came grandmother's turn.  A capacious pot bubbled lustily and
+sang upon the flames in the hearth, exhaling an appetizing savor of
+bacon and turnips.  Armed with a long metal ladle, grandmother
+would take from it, for each of us in turn, first the broth,
+wherein to soak the bread, and next the ration of turnips and
+bacon, partly fat and partly lean, filling the bowl to the top.  At
+the other end of the table was the pitcher, from which the thirsty
+were free to drink at will.  What appetites we had and what festive
+meals those were, especially when a cream cheese, homemade, was
+there to complete the banquet!
+
+Near us blazed the huge fireplace, in which whole tree trunks were
+consumed in the extreme cold weather.  From a corner of that
+monumental, soot-glazed chimney, projected, at a convenient height,
+a bracket with a slate shelf, which served to light the kitchen
+when we sat up late.  On this we burnt chips of pine wood, selected
+among the most translucent, those containing the most resin.  They
+shed over the room a lurid red light, which saved the walnut oil in
+the lamp.
+
+When the bowls were emptied and the last crumb of cheese scraped
+up, grandam went back to her distaff, on a stool by the chimney
+corner.  We children, boys and girls, squatting on our heels and
+putting out our hands to the cheerful fire of furze, formed a
+circle round her and listened to her with eager ears.  She told us
+stories, not greatly varied, it is true, but still wonderful, for
+the wolf often played a part in them.  I should have very much
+liked to see this wolf, the hero of so many tales that made our
+flesh creep; but the shepherd always refused to take me into his
+straw hut, in the middle of the fold, at night.  When we had done
+talking about the horrid wolf, the dragon and the serpent and when
+the resinous splinters had given out their last gleams, we went to
+sleep the sweet sleep that toil gives.  As the youngest of the
+household, I had a right to the mattress, a sack stuffed with oat
+chaff.  The others had to be content with straw.
+
+I owe a great deal to you, dear grandmother: it was in your lap
+that I found consolation for my first sorrows.  You have handed
+down to me, perhaps, a little of your physical vigor, a little of
+your love of work; but certainly you were no more accountable than
+grandfather for my passion for insects.
+
+Nor was either of my own parents.  My mother, who was quite
+illiterate, having known no teacher than the bitter experience of a
+harassed life, was the exact opposite of what my tastes required
+for their development.  My peculiarity must seek its origin
+elsewhere: that I will swear.  But I do not find it in my father,
+either.  The excellent man, who was hard working and sturdily built
+like granddad, had been to school as a child.  He knew how to
+write, though he took the greatest liberties with spelling; he knew
+how to read and understood what he read, provided the reading
+presented no more serious literary difficulties than occurred in
+the stories in the almanac.  He was the first of his line to allow
+himself to be tempted by the town and he lived to regret it.  Badly
+off, having but little outlet for his industry, making God knows
+what shifts to pick up a livelihood, he went through all the
+disappointments of the countryman turned townsman.  Persecuted by
+bad luck, borne down by the burden, for all his energy and good
+will, he was far indeed from starting me in entomology.  He had
+other cares, cares more direct and more serious.  A good cuff or
+two when he saw me pinning an insect to a cork was all the
+encouragement that I received from him.  Perhaps he was right.
+
+The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in heredity to explain
+my taste for observation.  You may say that I do not go far enough
+back.  Well, what should I find beyond the grandparents where my
+facts come to a stop?  I know, partly.  I should find even more
+uncultured ancestors: sons of the soil, plowmen, sowers of rye,
+neat herds; one and all, by the very force of things, of not the
+least account in the nice matters of observation.
+
+And yet, in me, the observer, the inquirer into things began to
+take shape almost in infancy.  Why should I not describe my first
+discoveries?  They are ingenuous in the extreme, but will serve
+notwithstanding to tell us something of the way in which tendencies
+first show themselves.  I was five or six years old.  That the poor
+household might have one mouth less to feed, I had been placed in
+grandmother's care, as I have just been saying.  Here, in solitude,
+my first gleams of intelligence were awakened amidst the geese, the
+calves and the sheep.  Everything before that is impenetrable
+darkness.  My real birth is at that moment when the dawn of
+personality rises, dispersing the mists of unconsciousness and
+leaving a lasting memory.  I can see myself plainly, clad in a
+soiled frieze frock flapping against my bare heels; I remember the
+handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit of string, a
+handkerchief often lost and replaced by the back of my sleeve.
+
+There I stand one day, a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my
+back and my face turned to the sun.  The dazzling splendor
+fascinates me.  I am the Moth attracted by the light of the lamp.
+With what am I enjoying the glorious radiance: with my mouth or my
+eyes?  That is the question put by my budding scientific curiosity.
+Reader, do not smile: the future observer is already practicing and
+experimenting.  I open my mouth wide and close my eyes: the glory
+disappears.  I open my eyes and shut my mouth: the glory reappears.
+I repeat the performance, with the same result.  The question's
+solved: I have learnt by deduction that I see the sun with my eyes.
+Oh, what a discovery! That evening, I told the whole house all
+about it.  Grandmother smiled fondly at my simplicity: the others
+laughed at it.  'Tis the way of the world.
+
+Another find.  At nightfall, amidst the neighboring bushes, a sort
+of jingle attracted my attention, sounding very faintly and softly
+through the evening silence.  Who is making that noise?  Is it a
+little bird chirping in his nest?  We must look into the matter and
+that quickly.  True, there is the wolf, who comes out of the woods
+at this time, so they tell me.  Let's go all the same, but not too
+far: just there, behind that clump of groom.  I stand on the look
+out for long, but all in vain.  At the faintest sound of movement
+in the brushwood, the jingle ceases.  I try again next day and the
+day after.  This time, my stubborn watch succeeds.  Whoosh! A grab
+of my hand and I hold the singer.  It is not a bird; it is a kind
+of Grasshopper whose hind legs my playfellows have taught me to
+like: a poor recompense for my prolonged ambush.  The best part of
+the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy flavor, but
+what I have just learnt.  I now know, from personal observation,
+that the Grasshopper sings.  I did not publish my discovery, for
+fear of the same laughter that greeted my story about the sun.
+
+Oh, what pretty flowers, in a field close to the house! They seem
+to smile to me with their great violet eyes.  Later on, I see, in
+their place, bunches of big red cherries.  I taste them.  They are
+not nice and they have no stones.  What can those cherries be?  At
+the end of the summer, grandfather comes with a spade and turns my
+field of observation topsy-turvy.  From under ground there comes,
+by the basketful and sackful, a sort of round root.  I know that
+root; it abounds in the house; time after time I have cooked it in
+the peat stove.  It is the potato.  Its violet flower and its red
+fruit are pigeonholed for good and all in my memory.
+
+With an ever watchful eye for animals and plants, the future
+observer, the little six-year-old monkey, practiced by himself, all
+unawares.  He went to the flower, he went to the insect, even as
+the large white butterfly goes to the cabbage and the red admiral
+to the thistle.  He looked and inquired, drawn by a curiosity
+whereof heredity did not know the secret.  He bore within him the
+germ of a faculty unknown to his family; he kept alive a glimmer
+that was foreign to the ancestral hearth.  What will become of that
+infinitesimal spark of childish fancy?  It will die out, beyond a
+doubt, unless education intervene, giving it the fuel of example,
+fanning it with the breath of experience.  In that case, schooling
+will explain what heredity leaves unexplained.  This is what we
+will examine in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI  MY SCHOOLING
+
+I am back in the village, in my father's house.  I am now seven
+years old; and it is high time that I went to school.  Nothing
+could have turned out better: the master is my godfather.  What
+shall I call the room in which I was to become acquainted with the
+alphabet?  It would be difficult to find the exact word, because
+the room served for every purpose.  It was at once a school, a
+kitchen, a bedroom, a dining room and, at times, a chicken house
+and a piggery.  Palatial schools were not dreamt of in those days;
+any wretched hovel was thought good enough.
+
+A broad fixed ladder led to the floor above.  Under the ladder
+stood a big bed in a boarded recess.  What was there upstairs?  I
+never quite knew.  I would see the master sometimes bring down an
+armful of hay for the ass, sometimes a basket of potatoes which the
+housewife emptied into the pot in which the little porkers' food
+was cooked.  It must have been a loft of sorts, a storehouse of
+provisions for man and beast.  Those two apartments composed the
+whole building.
+
+To return to the lower one, the schoolroom: a window faces south,
+the only window in the house, a low, narrow window whose frame you
+can touch at the same time with your head and both your shoulders.
+This sunny aperture is the only lively spot in the dwelling, it
+overlooks the greater part of the village, which straggles along
+the slopes of a slanting valley.  In the window recess is the
+master's little table.
+
+The opposite wall contains a niche in which stands a gleaming
+copper pail full of water.  Here the parched children can relieve
+their thirst when they please, with a cup left within their reach.
+At the top of the niche are a few shelves bright with pewter
+plates, dishes and drinking vessels, which are taken down from
+their sanctuary on great occasions only.
+
+More or less everywhere, at any spot which the light touches, are
+crudely colored pictures, pasted on the walls.  Here is Our Lady of
+the Seven Dolours, the disconsolate Mother of God opening her blue
+cloak to show her heart pierced with seven daggers.  Between the
+sun and moon, which stare at you with their great, round eyes, is
+the Eternal Father, whose robe swells as though puffed out with the
+storm.  To the right of the window, in the embrasure, is the
+Wandering Jew.  He wears a three-cornered hat, a large, white
+leather apron, hobnailed shoes and a stout stick.  'Never was such
+a bearded man seen before or after,' says the legend that surrounds
+the picture.  The draftsman has not forgotten this detail: the old
+man's beard spreads in a snowy avalanche over the apron and comes
+down to his knees.  On the left is Genevieve of Brabant,
+accompanied by the roe, with fierce Golo hiding in the bushes,
+sword in hand.  Above hangs The Death of Mr.  Credit, slain by
+defaulters at the door of his inn; and so on and so on, in every
+variety of subject, at all the unoccupied spots of the four walls.
+
+I was filled with admiration of this picture gallery, which held
+one's eyes with its great patches of red, blue, green and yellow.
+The master, however, had not set up his collection with a view to
+training our minds and hearts.  That was the last and least of the
+worthy man's ambitions.  An artist in his fashion, he had adorned
+his house according to his taste; and we benefited by the scheme of
+decoration.
+
+While the gallery of halfpenny pictures made me happy all the year
+round, there was another entertainment which I found particularly
+attractive in winter, in frosty weather, when the snow lay long on
+the ground.  Against the far wall stands the fireplace, as
+monumental in size as at my grandmother's.  Its arched cornice
+occupies the whole width of the room, for the enormous redoubt
+fulfils more than one purpose.  In the middle is the hearth, but,
+on the right and left, are two breast-high recesses, half wood and
+half stone.  Each of them is a bed, with a mattress stuffed with
+chaff of winnowed corn.  Two sliding planks serve as shutters and
+close the chest if the sleeper would be alone.  This dormitory,
+sheltered under the chimney mantel, supplies couches for the
+favored ones of the house, the two boarders.  They must lie snug in
+there at night, with their shutters closed, when the north wind
+howls at the mouth of the dark valley and sends the snow awhirl.
+The rest is occupied by the hearth and its accessories: the three-
+legged stools; the salt box, hanging against the wall to keep its
+contents dry; the heavy shovel which it takes two hands to wield;
+lastly, the bellows similar to those with which I used to blow out
+my cheeks in grandfather's house.  They consist of a mighty branch
+of pine, hollowed throughout its length with a red-hot iron.  By
+means of this channel, one's breath is applied, from a convenient
+distance, to the spot which is to be revived.  With a couple of
+stones for supports, the master's bundle of sticks and our own logs
+blaze and flicker, each of us having to bring a log of wood in the
+morning, if he would share in the treat.
+
+For that matter, the fire was not exactly lit for us, but, above
+all, to warm a row of three pots in which simmered the pigs' food,
+a mixture of potatoes and bran.  That, despite the tribute of a
+log, was the real object of the brushwood fire.  The two boarders,
+on their stools, in the best places, and we others sitting on our
+heels formed a semicircle around those big cauldrons, full to the
+brim and giving off little jets of steam, with puff-puff-puffing
+sounds.  The bolder among us, when the master's eyes were engaged
+elsewhere, would dig a knife into a well cooked potato and add it
+to their bit of bread; for I must say that, if we did little work
+in my school, at least we did a deal of eating.  It was the regular
+custom to crack a few nuts and nibble at a crust while writing our
+page or setting out our rows of figures.
+
+We, the smaller ones, in addition to the comfort of studying with
+our mouths full, had every now and then two other delights, which
+were quite as good as cracking nuts.  The back door communicated
+with the yard where the hen, surrounded by her brood of chicks,
+scratched at the dung hill, while the little porkers, of whom there
+were a dozen, wallowed in their stone trough.  This door would open
+sometimes to let one of us out, a privilege which we abused, for
+the sly ones among us were careful not to close it on returning.
+Forthwith, the porkers would come running in, one after the other,
+attracted by the smell of the boiled potatoes.  My bench, the one
+where the youngsters sat, stood against the wall, under the copper
+pail to which we used to go for water when the nuts had made us
+thirsty, and was right in the way of the pigs.  Up they came
+trotting and grunting, curling their little tails; they rubbed
+against our legs; they poked their cold pink snouts into our hands
+in search of a scrap of crust; they questioned us with their sharp
+little eyes to learn if we happened to have a dry chestnut for them
+in our pockets.  When they had gone the round, some this way and
+some that, they went back to the farmyard, driven away by a
+friendly flick of the master's handkerchief.  Next came the visit
+of the hen, bringing her velvet-coated chicks to see us.  All of us
+eagerly crumbled a little bread for our pretty visitors.  We vied
+with one another in calling them to us and tickling with our
+fingers their soft and downy backs.  No, there was certainly no
+lack of distractions.
+
+What could we learn in such a school as that! Let us first speak of
+the young ones, of whom I was one.  Each of us had, or rather was
+supposed to have, in his hands a little penny book, the alphabet,
+printed on gray paper.  It began, on the cover, with a pigeon, or
+something like it.  Next came a cross, followed by the letters in
+their order.  When we turned over, our eyes encountered the
+terrible ba, be, bi, bo, bu, the stumbling block of most of us.
+When we had mastered that formidable page, we were considered to
+know how to read and were admitted among the big ones.  But, if the
+little book was to be of any use, the least that was required was
+that the master should interest himself in us to some extent and
+show us how to set about things.  For this, the worthy man, too
+much taken up with the big ones, had not the time.  The famous
+alphabet with the pigeon was thrust upon us only to give us the air
+of scholars.  We were to contemplate it on our bench, to decipher
+it with the help of our next neighbor, in case he might know one or
+two of the letters.  Our contemplation came to nothing, being every
+moment disturbed by a visit to the potatoes in the stew pots, a
+quarrel among playmates about a marble, the grunting invasion of
+the porkers or the arrival of the chicks.  With the aid of these
+distractions, we would wait patiently until it was time for us to
+go home.  That was our most serious work.
+
+The big ones used to write.  They had the benefit of the small
+amount of light in the room, by the narrow window where the
+Wandering Jew and ruthless Golo faced each other, and of the large
+and only table with its circle of seats.  The school supplied
+nothing, not even a drop of ink; every one had to come with a full
+set of utensils.  The inkhorn of those days, a relic of the ancient
+pen case of which Rabelais speaks, was a long cardboard box divided
+into two stages.  The upper compartment held the pens, made of
+goose or turkey quills trimmed with a penknife; the lower
+contained, in a tiny well, ink made of soot mixed with vinegar.
+
+The master's great business was to mend the pens--a delicate work,
+not without danger for inexperienced fingers--and then to trace at
+the head of the white page a line of strokes, single letters or
+words, according to the scholar's capabilities.  When that is over,
+keep an eye on the work of art which is coming to adorn the copy!
+With what undulating movements of the wrist does the hand, resting
+on the little finger, prepare and plan its flight! All at once, the
+hand starts off, flies, whirls; and, lo and behold, under the line
+of writing is unfurled a garland of circles, spirals and
+flourishes, framing a bird with outspread wings, the whole, if you
+please, in red ink, the only kind worthy of such a pen.  Large and
+small, we stood awestruck in the presence of these marvels.  The
+family, in the evening, after supper, would pass from hand to hand
+the masterpiece brought back from school: 'What a man!' was the
+comment.  'What a man, to draw you a Holy Ghost with a stroke of
+the pen!'
+
+What was read at my school?  At most, in French, a few selections
+from sacred history.  Latin recurred oftener, to teach us to sing
+vespers properly.  The more advanced pupils tried to decipher
+manuscript, a deed of sale, the hieroglyphics of some scrivener.
+
+And history, geography?  No one ever heard of them.  What
+difference did it make to us whether the earth was round or square!
+In either case, it was just as hard to make it bring forth
+anything.
+
+And grammar?  The master troubled his head very little about that;
+and we still less.  We should have been greatly surprised by the
+novelty and the forbidding look of such words in the grammatical
+jargon as substantive, indicative and subjunctive.  Accuracy of
+language, whether of speech or writing, must be learnt by practice.
+And none of us was troubled by scruples in this respect.  What was
+the use of all these subtleties, when, on coming out of school, a
+lad simply went back to his flock of sheep!
+
+And arithmetic?  Yes, we did a little of this but not under that
+learned name.  We called it sums.  To put down rows of figures, not
+too long, add them and subtract them one from the other was more or
+less familiar work.  On Saturday evenings, to finish up the week,
+there was a general orgy of sums.  The top boy stood up and, in a
+loud voice, recited the multiplication table up to twelve times.  I
+say twelve times, for in those days, because of our old duodecimal
+measures, it was the custom to count as far as the twelve times
+table, instead of the ten times of the metric system.  When this
+recital was over, the whole class, the little ones included, took
+it up in chorus, creating such an uproar that chicks and porkers
+took to flight if they happened to be there.  And this went on to
+twelve times twelve, the first in the row starting the next table
+and the whole class repeating it as loud as it could yell.  Of all
+that we were taught in school, the multiplication table was what we
+knew best, for this noisy method ended by dinning the different
+numbers into our ears.  This does not mean that we became skilful
+reckoners.  The cleverest of us easily got muddled with the figures
+to be carried in a multiplication sum.  As for division, rare
+indeed were they who reached such heights.  In short, the moment a
+problem, however insignificant, had to be solved, we had recourse
+to mental gymnastics much rather than to the learned aid of
+arithmetic.
+
+When all is said, our master was an excellent man who could have
+kept school very well but for his lack of one thing; and that was
+time.  He devoted to us all the little leisure which his numerous
+functions left him.  And, first of all, he managed the property of
+an absentee landowner, who only occasionally set foot in the
+village.  He had under his care an old castle with four towers,
+which had become so many pigeon houses; he directed the getting in
+of the hay, the walnuts, the apples and the oats.  We used to help
+him during the summer, when the school, which was well attended in
+winter, was almost deserted.  All that remained, because they were
+not yet big enough to work in the fields, were a few children,
+including him who was one day to set down these memorable facts.
+Lessons at that time were less dull.  They were often given on the
+hay or on the straw; oftener still, lesson time was spent in
+cleaning out the dovecote or stamping on the snails that had
+sallied in rainy weather from their fortresses, the tall box
+borders of the garden belonging to the castle.
+
+Our master was a barber.  With his light hand, which was so clever
+at beautifying our copies with curlicue birds, he shaved the
+notabilities of the place: the mayor, the parish priest, the
+notary.  Our master was a bell ringer.  A wedding or a christening
+interrupted the lessons: he had to ring a peal.  A gathering storm
+gave us a holiday: the great bell must be tolled to ward off the
+lightning and the hail.  Our master was a choir singer.  With his
+mighty voice, he filled the church when he led the Magnificat at
+vespers.  Our master wound up and regulated the village clock.
+This was his proudest function.  Giving a glance at the sun, to
+ascertain the time more or less nearly, he would climb to the top
+of the steeple, open a huge cage of rafters and find himself in a
+maze of wheels and springs whereof the secret was known to him
+alone.
+
+With such a school and such a master and such examples, what will
+become of my embryo tastes, as yet so imperceptible?  In that
+environment, they seem bound to perish, stifled for ever.  Yet no,
+the germ has life; it works in my veins, never to leave them again.
+It finds nourishment everywhere, down to the cover of my penny
+alphabet, embellished with a crude picture of a pigeon which I
+study and contemplate much more zealously than the
+A B C.  Its round eye, with its circlet of dots, seems to smile
+upon me.  Its wing, of which I count the feathers one by one, tells
+me of flights on high, among the beautiful clouds; it carries me to
+the beeches raising their smooth trunks above a mossy carpet
+studded with white mushrooms that look like eggs dropped by some
+vagrant hen; it takes me to the snow-clad peaks where the birds
+leave the starry print of their red feet.  He is a fine fellow, my
+pigeon friend: he consoles me for the woes hidden behind the cover
+of my book.  Thanks to him, I sit quietly on my bench and wait more
+or less till school is over.
+
+School out of doors has other charms.  When the master takes us to
+kill the snails in the box borders, I do not always scrupulously
+fulfil my office as an exterminator.  My heel sometimes hesitates
+before coming down upon the handful which I have gathered.  They
+are so pretty! Just think, there are yellow ones and pink, white
+ones and brown, all with dark spiral streaks.  I fill my pockets
+with the handsomest, so as to feast my eyes on them at my leisure.
+
+On hay making days in the master's field, I strike up an
+acquaintance with the frog.  Flayed and stuck at the end of a split
+stick, he serves as bait to tempt the crayfish to come out of his
+retreat by the brook side.  On the alder trees I catch the Hoplia,
+the splendid scarab who pales the azure of the heavens.  I pick the
+narcissus and learn to gather, with the tip of my tongue, the tiny
+drop of honey that lies right at the bottom of the cleft corolla.
+I also learn that too long indulgence in this feast brings a
+headache; but this discomfort in no way impairs my admiration for
+the glorious white flower, which wears a narrow red collar at the
+throat of its funnel.
+
+When we go to beat the walnut trees, the barren grass plots provide
+me with locusts spreading their wings, some into a blue fan, others
+into a red.  And thus the rustic school, even in the heart of
+winter, furnished continuous food for my interest in things.  There
+was no need for precept and example: my passion for animals and
+plants made progress of itself.
+
+What did not make progress was my acquaintance with my letters,
+greatly neglected in favor of the pigeon.  I was still at the same
+stage, hopelessly behindhand with the intractable alphabet, when my
+father, by a chance inspiration, brought me home from the town what
+was destined to give me a start along the road of reading.  Despite
+the not insignificant part which it played in my intellectual
+awakening, the purchase was by no means a ruinous one.  It was a
+large print, price six farthings, colored and divided into
+compartments in which animals of all sorts taught the A B C by
+means of the first letters of their names.
+
+Where should I keep the precious picture?  As it happened, in the
+room set apart for the children at home, there was a little window
+like the one in the school, opening in the same way out of a sort
+of recess and in the same way overlooking most of the village.  One
+was on the right, the other on the left of the castle with the
+pigeon house towers; both afforded an equally good view of the
+heights of the slanting valley.  I was able to enjoy the school
+window only at rare intervals, when the master left his little
+table; the other was at my disposal as often as I liked.  I spent
+long hours there, sitting on a little fixed window seat.
+
+The view was magnificent.  I could see the ends of the earth, that
+is to say, the hills that blocked the horizon, all but a misty gap
+through which the brook with the crayfish flowed under the alders
+and willows.  High up on the skyline, a few wind-battered oaks
+bristled on the ridges; and beyond there lay nothing but the
+unknown, laden with mystery.
+
+At the back of the hollow stood the church, with its three steeples
+and its clock; and, a little higher, the village square, where a
+spring, fashioned into a fountain, gurgled from one basin into
+another, under a wide arched roof.  I could hear from my window the
+chatter of the women washing their clothes, the strokes of their
+beaters, the rasping of the pots scoured with sand and vinegar.
+Sprinkled over the slopes are little houses with their garden
+patches in terraces banked up by tottering walls, which bulge under
+the thrust of the earth.  Here and there are very steep lanes, with
+the dents of the rock forming a natural pavement.  The mule, sure-
+footed though he be, would hesitate to enter these dangerous passes
+with his load of branches.
+
+Further on, beyond the village, half-way up the hills, stood the
+great ever-so-old lime tree, the Tel, as we used to call it, whose
+sides, hollowed out by the ages, were the favorite hiding places of
+us children at play.  On fair days, its immense, spreading foliage
+cast a wide shadow over the herds of oxen and sheep.  Those solemn
+days, which only came once a year, brought me a few ideas from
+without: I learnt that the world did not end with my amphitheater
+of hills.  I saw the inn keeper's wine arrive on mule back and in
+goat skin bottles.  I hung about the market place and watched the
+opening of jars full of stewed pears, the setting out of baskets of
+grapes, an almost unknown fruit, the object of eager covetousness.
+I stood and gazed in admiration at the roulette board on which, for
+a sou, according to the spot at which its needle stopped on a
+circular row of nails, you won a pink poodle made of barley sugar,
+or a round jar of aniseed sweets, or, much oftener, nothing at all.
+On a piece of canvas on the ground, rolls of printed calico with
+red flowers, were displayed to tempt the girls.  Close by rose a
+pile of beechwood clogs, tops and boxwood flutes.  Here the
+shepherds chose their instruments, trying them by blowing a note or
+two.  How new it all was to me! What a lot of things there were to
+see in this world! Alas, that wonderful time was of but short
+duration! At night, after a little brawling at the inn, it was all
+over; and the village returned to silence for a year.
+
+But I must not linger over these memories of the dawn of life.  We
+were speaking of the memorable picture brought from town.  Where
+shall I keep it, to make the best use of it?  Why, of course, it
+must be pasted on the embrasure of my window.  The recess, with its
+seat, shall be my study cell; here I can feast my eyes by turns on
+the big lime tree and the animals of my alphabet.  And this was
+what I did.
+
+And now, my precious picture, it is our turn, yours and mine.  You
+began with the sacred beast, the ass, whose name, with a big
+initial, taught me the letter A.  The boeuf, the ox, stood for B;
+the canard, the duck, told me about C; the dindon, the turkey, gave
+me the letter D.  And so on with the rest.  A few compartments, it
+is true, were lacking in clearness.  I had no friendly feeling for
+the hippopotamus, the kamichi, or horned screamer, and the zebu,
+who aimed at making me say H, K and Z.  Those outlandish beasts,
+which failed to give the abstract letter the support of a
+recognized reality, caused me to hesitate for a time over their
+recalcitrant consonants.  No matter: father came to my aid in
+difficult cases; and I made such rapid progress that, in a few
+days, I was able to turn in good earnest the pages of my little
+pigeon book, hitherto so undecipherable.  I was initiated; I knew
+how to spell.  My parents marveled.  I can explain this unexpected
+progress today.  Those speaking pictures, which brought me amongst
+my friends the beasts, were in harmony with my instincts.  If the
+animal has not fulfilled all that it promised in so far as I am
+concerned, I have at least to thank it for teaching me to read.  I
+should have succeeded by other means, I do not doubt, but not so
+quickly nor so pleasantly.  Animals forever!
+
+Luck favored me a second time.  As a reward for my prowess, I was
+given La Fontaine's Fables, in a popular, cheap edition, crammed
+with pictures, small, I admit, and very inaccurate, but still
+delightful.  Here were the crow, the fox, the wolf, the magpie, the
+frog, the rabbit, the ass, the dog, the cat: all persons of my
+acquaintance.  The glorious book was immensely to my taste, with
+its skimpy illustrations on which the animal walked and talked.  As
+to understanding what it said, that was another story! Never mind,
+my lad! Put together syllables that say nothing to you as yet; they
+will speak to you later and La Fontaine will always remain your
+friend.
+
+I come to the time when I was ten years old and at Rodez College.
+My functions as a serving boy in the chapel entitled me to free
+instruction as a day boarder.  There were four of us in white
+surplices and red skull-caps and cassocks.  I was the youngest of
+the party and did little more than walk on.  I counted as a unit;
+and that was about all, for I was never certain when to ring the
+bell or move the missal.  I was all of a tremble when we gathered
+two on this side and two on that, with genuflection's, in the
+middle of the sanctuary, to intone the Domine, salvum fac regern at
+the end of mass.  Let me make a confession: tongue-tied with
+shyness, I used to leave it to the others.
+
+Nevertheless, I was well thought of, for, in the school, I cut a
+good figure in composition and translation.  In that classical
+atmosphere, there was talk of Procas, King of Alba, and of his two
+sons, Numitor and Amulius.  We heard of Cynoegirus, the strong
+jawed man, who, having lost his two hands in battle, seized and
+held a Persian galley with his teeth, and of Cadmus the Phoenician,
+who sowed a dragon's teeth as though they were beans and gathered
+his harvest in the shape of a host of armed men, who killed one
+another as they rose up from the ground.  The only one who survived
+the slaughter was one as tough as leather, presumably the son of
+the big back grinder.
+
+Had they talked to me about the man in the moon, I could not have
+been more startled.  I made up for it with my animals, which I was
+far from forgetting amid this phantasmagoria of heroes and
+demigods.  While honoring the exploits of Cadmus and Cynoegirus, I
+hardly ever failed, on Sundays and Thursdays [the weekly half-
+holiday in French schools], to go and see if the cowslip or the
+yellow daffodil was making its appearance in the meadows, if the
+Linnet was hatching on the juniper bushes, if the Cockchafers were
+plopping down from the wind shaken poplars.  Thus was the sacred
+spark kept aglow, ever brighter than before.
+
+By easy stages, I came to Virgil and was very much smitten with
+Meliboeus, Corydon, Menalcas, Damoetas and the rest of them.  The
+scandals of the ancient shepherds fortunately passed unnoticed; and
+within the frame in which the characters moved were exquisite
+details concerning the bee, the cicada, the turtle dove, the crow,
+the nanny goat and the golden broom.  A veritable delight were
+these stories of the fields, sung in sonorous verse; and the Latin
+poet left a lasting impression on my classical recollections.
+
+Then, suddenly, goodbye to my studies, goodbye to Tityrus and
+Menalcas.  Ill luck is swooping down on us, relentlessly.  Hunger
+threatens us at home.  And now, boy, put your trust in God; run
+about and earn your penn'orth of potatoes as best you can.  Life is
+about to become a hideous inferno.  Let us pass quickly over this
+phase.
+Amid this lamentable chaos, my love for the insect ought to have
+gone under.  Not at all.  It would have survived the raft of the
+Medusa.  I still remember a certain pine cockchafer met for the
+first time.  The plumes on her antennae, her pretty pattern of
+white spots on a dark brown ground were as a ray of sunshine in the
+gloomy wretchedness of the day.
+
+To cut a long story short: good fortune, which never abandons the
+brave, brought me to the primary normal school at Vaucluse where I
+was assured food: dried chestnuts and chickpeas.  The principal, a
+man of broad views, soon came to trust his new assistant.  He left
+me practically a free hand, so long as I satisfied the school
+curriculum, which was very modest in those days.  Possessing a
+smattering of Latin and grammar, I was a little ahead of my fellow
+pupils.  I took advantage of this to get some order into my vague
+knowledge of plants and animals.  While a dictation lesson was
+being corrected around me, with generous assistance from the
+dictionary, I would examine, in the recesses of my desk, the
+oleander's fruit, the snapdragon's seed vessel, the wasp's sting
+and the ground beetle's wing-case.
+
+With this foretaste of natural science, picked up haphazard and by
+stealth, I left school more deeply in love than ever with insects
+and flowers.  And yet I had to give it all up.  That wider
+education, which would have to be my source of livelihood in the
+future, demanded this imperiously.  What was I to take in hand to
+raise me above the primary school, whose staff could barely earn
+their bread in those days?  Natural history could not bring me
+anywhere.  The educational system of the time kept it at a
+distance, as unworthy of association with Latin and Greek.
+Mathematics remained, with its very simple equipment: a blackboard,
+a bit of chalk and a few books.
+
+So I flung myself with might and main into conic sections and the
+calculus: a hard battle, if ever there was one, without guides or
+counselors, face to face for days on end with the abstruse problem
+which my stubborn thinking at last stripped of its mysteries.  Next
+came the physical sciences, studied in the same manner, with an
+impossible laboratory, the work of my own hands.
+
+The reader can imagine the fate of my favorite branch of science in
+this fierce struggle.  At the faintest sign of revolt, I lectured
+myself severely, lest I should let myself be seduced by some new
+grass, some unknown Beetle.  I did violence to my feelings.  My
+natural history books were sentenced to oblivion, relegated to the
+bottom of a trunk.
+
+And so, in the end, I am sent to teach physics and chemistry at
+Ajaccio College.  This time, the temptation is too much for me.
+The sea, with its wonders, the beach, whereon the tide casts such
+beautiful shells, the maquis of myrtles, arbutus and mastic trees:
+all this paradise of gorgeous nature has too much on its side in
+the struggle with the sine and the cosine.  I succumb.  My leisure
+time is divided into two parts.  One, the larger, is allotted to
+mathematics, the foundation of my academical future, as planned by
+myself; the other is spent, with much misgiving, in botanizing and
+looking for the treasures of the sea.  What a country and what
+magnificent studies to be made, if, unobsessed by x and y, I had
+devoted myself wholeheartedly to my inclinations!
+
+We are the wisp of straw, the plaything of the winds.  We think
+that we are making for a goal deliberately chosen; destiny drives
+us towards another.  Mathematics, the exaggerated preoccupation of
+my youth, did me hardly any service; and animals, which I avoided
+as much as ever I could, are the consolation of my old age.
+Nevertheless, I bear no grudge against the sine and the cosine,
+which I continue to hold in high esteem.  They cost me many a
+pallid hour at one time, but they always afforded me some first
+rate entertainment: they still do so, when my head lies tossing
+sleeplessly on its pillow.
+
+Meanwhile, Ajaccio received the visit of a famous Avignon botanist,
+Requien by name, who, with a box crammed with paper under his arm,
+had long been botanizing all over Corsica, pressing and drying
+specimens and distributing them to his friends.  We soon became
+acquainted.  I accompanied him in my free time on his explorations
+and never did the master have a more attentive disciple.  To tell
+the truth, Requien was not a man of learning so much as an
+enthusiastic collector.  Very few would have felt capable of
+competing with him when it came to giving the name or the
+geographical distribution of a plant.  A blade of grass, a pad of
+moss, a scab of lichen, a thread of seaweed: he knew them all.  The
+scientific name flashed across his mind at once.  What an unerring
+memory, what a genius for classification amid the enormous mass of
+things observed! I stood aghast at it.  I owe much to Requien in
+the domain of botany.  Had death spared him longer, I should
+doubtless have owed more to him, for his was a generous heart, ever
+open to the troubles of novices.
+
+In the following year, I met Moquin-Tandon, with whom, thanks to
+Requien, I had already exchanged a few letters on botany.  The
+illustrious Toulouse professor came to study on the spot the flora
+which he proposed to describe systematically.  When he arrived, all
+the hotel bedrooms were reserved for the members of the general
+council which had been summoned; and I offered him board and
+lodging: a shakedown in a room overlooking the sea; fare consisting
+of lampreys, turbot and sea urchins: common enough dishes in that
+land of Cockayne, but possessing no small attraction for the
+naturalist, because of their novelty.  My cordial proposal tempted
+him; he yielded to my blandishments; and there we were for a
+fortnight chatting at table de omni re scibili after the botanical
+excursion was over.
+
+With Moquin-Tandon, new vistas opened before me.  Here it was no
+longer the case of a nomenclator with an infallible memory: he was
+a naturalist with far-reaching ideas, a philosopher who soared
+above petty details to comprehensive views of life, a writer, a
+poet who knew how to clothe the naked truth in the magic mantle of
+the glowing word.  Never again shall I sit at an intellectual feast
+like that: 'Leave your mathematics,' he said.  'No one will take
+the least interest in your formula.  Get to the beast, the plant;
+and, if, as I believe, the fever burns in your veins, you will find
+men to listen to you.'
+
+We made an expedition to the center of the island, to Monte Renoso,
+with which I was already familiar.  I made the scientist pick the
+hoary everlasting (Helichrysum frigidum), which makes a wonderful
+patch of silver; the many-headed thrift, or mouflon grass (Armeria
+multiceps), which the Corsicans call erba muorone; the downy
+marguerite (Leucanthemum tomosum) ,which, clad in wadding, shivers
+amid the snows; and many other rarities dear to the botanist.
+Moquin-Tandon was jubilant.  I, on my side, was much more attracted
+and overcome by his words and his enthusiasm than by the hoary
+everlasting.  When we came down from the cold mountaintop, my mind
+was made up: mathematics would be abandoned.
+
+On the day before his departure, he said to me: 'You interest
+yourself in shells.  That is something, but it is not enough.  You
+must look into the animal itself.  I will show you how it's done.'
+
+And, taking a sharp pair of scissors from the family work-basket
+and a couple of needles stuck into a bit of vine shoot which served
+as a makeshift handle, he showed me the anatomy of a snail in a
+soup plate filled with water.  Gradually he explained and sketched
+the organs which he spread before my eyes.  This was the only,
+never-to-be-forgotten lesson in natural history that I ever
+received in my life.
+
+It is time to conclude.  I was cross-examining myself, being unable
+to cross-examine the silent Beetle.  As far as it is possible to
+read within myself, I answer as follows: 'From early childhood,
+from the moment of my first mental awakening, I have felt drawn
+towards the things of nature, or, to return to our catchword, I
+have the gift, the bump of observation.'
+
+After the details which I have already given about my ancestors, it
+would be ridiculous to look to heredity for an explanation of the
+fact.  Nor would any one venture to suggest the words or example of
+my masters.  Of scientific education, the fruit of college
+training, I had none whatever.  I never set foot in a lecture hall
+except to undergo the ordeal of examinations.  Without masters,
+without guides, often without books, in spite of poverty, that
+terrible extinguisher, I went ahead, persisted, facing my
+difficulties, until the indomitable bump ended by shedding its
+scanty contents.  Yes, they were very scanty, yet possibly of some
+value, if circumstances had come to their assistance.  I was a born
+animalist.  Why and how?  No reply.
+
+We thus have, all of us, in different directions and in a greater
+or lesser degree, characteristics that brand us with a special
+mark, characteristics of an unfathomable origin.  They exist
+because they exist; and that is all that any one can say.  The gift
+is not handed down: the man of talent has a fool for a son.  Nor is
+it acquired; but it is improved by practice.  He who has not the
+germ of it in his veins will never possess it, in spite of all the
+pains of a hothouse education.
+
+That to which we give the name of instinct when speaking of animals
+is something similar to genius.  It is, in both cases, a peak that
+rises above the ordinary level.  But instinct is handed down,
+unchanged and undiminished, throughout the sequence of a species;
+it is permanent and general and in this it differs greatly from
+genius, which is not transmissible and changes in different cases.
+Instinct is the inviolable heritage of the family and falls to one
+and all, without distinction.  Here the difference ends.
+Independent of similarity of structure, it breaks out like genius,
+here or elsewhere, for no perceptible reason.  Nothing causes it to
+be foreseen, nothing in the organization explains it.  If cross-
+examined on this point, the Dung beetles and the rest, each with
+his own peculiar talent, would answer, were we able to understand
+them: 'Instinct is the animal's genius.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII  THE POND
+
+The pond, the delight of my early childhood, is still a sight
+whereof my old eyes never tire.  What animation in that verdant
+world! On the warm mud of the edges, the frog's little tadpole
+basks and frisks in its black legions; down in the water, the
+orange-bellied newt steers his way slowly with the broad rudder of
+his flat tail; among the reeds are stationed the flotillas of the
+caddis worms, half protruding from their tubes, which are now a
+tiny bit of stick and again a turret of little shells.
+
+In the deep places, the water beetle dives, carrying with him his
+reserves of breath: an air bubble at the tip of the wing cases and,
+under the chest, a film of gas that gleams like a silver
+breastplate; on the surface, the ballet of those shimmering pearls,
+the whirligigs, turns and twists about; hard by there skims the
+unsubmersible troop of the pond skaters, who glide along with side
+strokes similar to those which the cobbler makes when sewing.
+
+Here are the water boatmen, who swim on their backs with two oars
+spread cross-wise, and the flat water scorpions; here, squalidly
+clad in mud, is the grub of the largest of our dragonflies, so
+curious because of its manner of progression: it fills its hinder
+parts, a yawning funnel, with water, spurts it out again and
+advances just so far as the recoil of its hydraulic cannon.
+
+The mollusks abound, a peaceful tribe.  At the bottom, the plump
+river snails discreetly raise their lid, opening ever so little the
+shutters of their dwelling; on the level of the water, in the
+glades of the aquatic garden, the pond snails--Physa, Limnaea and
+Planorbis--take the air.  Dark leeches writhe upon their prey, a
+chunk of earthworm; thousands of tiny, reddish grubs, future
+mosquitoes, go spinning around and twist and curve like so many
+graceful dolphins.
+
+Yes, a stagnant pool, though but a few feet wide, hatched by the
+sun, is an immense world, an inexhaustible mine of observation to
+the studious man and a marvel to the child who, tired of his paper
+boat, diverts his eyes and thoughts a little with what is happening
+in the water.  Let me tell what I remember of my first pond, at a
+time when ideas began to dawn in my seven-year-old brain.
+
+How shall a man earn his living in my poor native village, with its
+inclement weather and its niggardly soil?  The owner of a few acres
+of grazing land rears sheep.  In the best parts, he scrapes the
+soil with the swing plow; he flattens it into terraces banked by
+walls of broken stones.  Pannierfuls of dung are carried up on
+donkey-back from the cowshed.  Then, in due season, comes the
+excellent potato, which, boiled and served hot in a basket of
+plaited straw, is the chief stand-by in winter.
+
+Should the crop exceed the needs of the household, the surplus goes
+to feed a pig, that precious beast, a treasure of bacon and ham.
+The ewes supply butter and curds; the garden boasts cabbages,
+turnips and even a few hives in a sheltered corner.  With wealth
+like that one can look fate in the face.
+
+But we, we have nothing, nothing but the little house inherited by
+my mother and its adjoining patch of garden.  The meager resources
+of the family are coming to an end.  It is time to see to it and
+that quickly.  What is to be done?  That is the stern question
+which father and mother sat debating one evening.
+
+Hop-o'-my-Thumb, hiding under the woodcutter's stool, listened to
+his parents overcome by want.  I also, pretending to sleep, with my
+elbows on the table, listen not to blood curdling designs, but to
+grand plans that set my heart rejoicing.  This is how the matter
+stands: at the bottom of the village, near the church, at the spot
+where the water of the large roofed spring escapes from its
+underground weir and joins the brook in the valley, an enterprising
+man, back from the war, has set up a small tallow factory.  He
+sells the scrapings of his pans, the burnt fat, reeking of candle
+grease, at a low price.  He proclaims these wares to be excellent
+for fattening ducks.
+
+"Suppose we bred some ducks," says mother.  "They sell very well in
+town.  Henri would mind them and take them down to the brook."
+
+"Very well," says father, "let's breed some ducks.  There may be
+difficulties in the way; but we'll have a try."
+
+That night, I had dreams of paradise: I was with my ducklings, clad
+in their yellow suits; I took them to the pond, I watched them have
+their bath, I brought them back again, carrying the more tired ones
+in a basket.
+
+A month or two after, the little birds of my dreams were a reality.
+There were twenty-four of them.  They had been hatched by two hens,
+of whom one, the big, black one, was an inmate of the house, while
+the other was borrowed from a neighbor.
+
+To bring them up, the former is sufficient, so careful is she of
+her adopted family.  At first, everything goes perfectly: a tub
+with two fingers' depth of water serves as a pond.  On sunny days,
+the ducklings bathe in it under the anxious eye of the hen.
+
+A fortnight later, the tub is no longer enough.  It contains
+neither cresses crammed with tiny shellfish nor worms and tadpoles,
+dainty morsels both.  The time has come for dives and hunts amid
+the tangle of the water weeds; and for us the day of trouble has
+also come.  True, the miller, down by the brook, has fine ducks,
+easy and cheap to bring up; the tallow smelter, who has extolled
+his burnt fat so loudly, has some as well, for he has the advantage
+of the waste water from the spring at the bottom of the village;
+but how are we, right up there, at the top, to procure aquatic
+sports for our broods?  In summer, we have hardly water to drink!
+
+Near the house, in a freestone recess, a scanty source trickles
+into a basin made in the rock.  .  Four or five families have, like
+ourselves, to draw their water there with copper pails.  By the
+time that the schoolmaster's donkey has slaked her thirst and the
+neighbors have taken their provision for the day, the basin is dry.
+We have to wait for four-and-twenty hours for it to fill.  No, this
+is not the hole in which the ducks would delight nor indeed in
+which they would be tolerated.
+
+There remains the brook.  To go down to it with the troop of
+ducklings is fraught with danger.  On the way through the village,
+we might meet cats, bold ravishers of small poultry; some surly
+mongrel might frighten and scatter the little band; and it would be
+a hard puzzle to collect it in its entirety.  We must avoid the
+traffic and take refuge in peaceful and sequestered spots.
+
+On the hills, the path that climbs behind the chateau soon takes a
+sudden turn and widens into a small plain beside the meadows.  It
+skirts a rocky slope whence trickles, level with the ground, a
+streamlet, forming a pond of some size.  Here profound solitude
+reigns all day long.  The ducklings will be well off; and the
+journey can be made in peace by a deserted footpath.
+
+You, little man, shall take them to that delectable spot.  What a
+day it was that marked my first appearance as a herdsman of ducks!
+Why must there be a jar to the even tenor of such joys?  The too
+frequent encounter of my tender skin with the hard ground had given
+me a large and painful blister on the heel.  Had I wanted to put on
+the shoes stowed away in the cupboard for Sundays and holidays, I
+could not.  There was nothing for it but to go barefoot over the
+broken stones, dragging my leg and carrying high the injured heel.
+
+Let us make a start, hobbling along, switch in hand, behind the
+ducks.  They too, poor little things, have sensitive soles to their
+feet; they limp, they quack with fatigue.  They would refuse to go
+any farther if I did not, from time to time, call a halt under the
+shelter of an ash.
+
+We are there at last.  The place could not be better for my
+birdlets; shallow, tepid water, interspersed with muddy knolls and
+green eyots.  The diversions of the bath begin forthwith.  The
+ducklings clap their beaks and rummage here, there and everywhere;
+they sift each mouthful, rejecting the clear water and retaining
+the good bits.  In the deeper parts, they point their sterns into
+the air and stick their heads under water.  They are happy; and it
+is a blessed thing to see them at work.  We will let them be.  It
+is my turn to enjoy the pond.
+
+What is this?  On the mud lie some loose, knotted, soot-colored
+cords.  One could take them for threads of wool like those which
+you pull out of an old ravelly stocking.  Can some shepherdess,
+knitting a black sock and finding her work turn out badly, have
+begun all over again and, in her impatience, have thrown down the
+wool with all the dropped stitches?  It really looks like it.
+
+I take up one of those cords in my hand.  It is sticky and
+extremely slack; the thing slips through the fingers before they
+can catch hold of it.  A few of the knots burst and shed their
+contents.  What comes out is a black globule, the size of a pin's
+head, followed by a flat tail.  I recognize, on a very small scale,
+a familiar object: the tadpole, the frog's baby.  I have seen
+enough.  Let us leave the knotted cords alone.
+
+The next creatures please me better.  They spin round on the
+surface of the water and their black backs gleam in the sun.  If I
+lift a hand to seize them, that moment they disappear, I know not
+where.  It's a pity: I should have much liked to see them closer
+and to make them wriggle in a little bowl which I should have put
+ready for them.
+
+Let us look at the bottom of the water, pulling aside those bunches
+of green string whence beads of air are rising and gathering into
+foam.  There is something of everything underneath.  I see pretty
+shells with compact whorls, flat as beans; I notice little worms
+carrying tufts and feathers; I make out some with flabby fins
+constantly flapping on their backs.  What are they all doing there?
+What are their names?  I do not know.  And I stare at them for ever
+so long, held by the incomprehensible mystery of the waters.
+
+At the place where the pond dribbles into the adjoining field are
+some alder trees; and here I make a glorious find.  It is a scarab-
+-not a very large one, oh no! He is smaller than a cherry-stone,
+but of an unutterable blue.  The angels in paradise must wear
+dresses of that color.  I put the glorious one inside an empty
+snail-shell, which I plug up with a leaf.  I shall admire that
+living jewel at my leisure, when I get back.  Other distractions
+summon me away.
+
+The spring that feeds the pond trickles from the rock, cold and
+clear.  The water first collects into a cup, the size of the hollow
+of one's two hands, and then runs over in a stream.  These falls
+call for a mill: that goes without saying.  Two bits of straw,
+artistically crossed upon an axis, provide the machinery; some flat
+stones set on edge afford supports.  It is a great success: the
+mill turns admirably.  My triumph would be complete, could I but
+share it.  For want of other playmates, I invite the ducks.
+
+Everything palls in this poor world of ours, even a mill made of
+two straws.  Let us think of something else: let us contrive a dam
+to hold back the waters and form a pool.  There is no lack of
+stones for the brickwork.  I pick the most suitable; I break the
+larger ones.  And, while collecting these blocks, suddenly I forget
+all about the dam which I meant to build.
+
+On one of the broken stones, in a cavity large enough for me to put
+my fist in, something gleams like glass.  The hollow is lined with
+facets gathered in sixes which flash and glitter in the sun.  I
+have seen something like this in church, on the great saints' days,
+when the light of the candles in the big chandelier kindles the
+stars in its hanging crystal.
+
+We children, lying, in summer, on the straw of the threshing floor,
+have told one another stories of the treasures which a dragon
+guards underground.  Those treasures now return to my mind: the
+names of precious stones ring out uncertainly but gloriously in my
+memory.  I think of the king's crown, of the princesses' necklaces.
+In breaking stones, can I have found, but on a much richer scale,
+the thing that shines quite small in my mother's ring?  I want more
+such.
+
+The dragon of the subterranean treasures treats me generously.  He
+gives me his diamonds in such quantities that soon I possess a heap
+of broken stones sparkling with magnificent clusters.  He does
+more: he gives me his gold.  The trickle of water from the rock
+falls on a bed of fine sand which it swirls into bubbles.  If I
+bent over towards the light, I see something like gold filings
+whirling where the fall touches the bottom.  Is it really the
+famous metal of which twenty-franc pieces, so rare with us at home,
+are made?  One would think so, from the glitter.
+
+I take a pinch of sand and place it in my palm.  The brilliant
+particles are numerous, but so small that I have to pick them up
+with a straw moistened in my mouth.  Let us drop this: they are too
+tiny and too bothersome to collect.  The big, valuable lumps must
+be farther on, in the thickness of the rock.  We'll come back
+later; we'll blast the mountain.
+
+I break more stones.  Oh, what a queer thing has just come loose,
+all in one piece! It is turned spiral-wise, like certain flat
+snails that come out of the cracks of old walls in rainy weather.
+With its gnarled sides, it looks like a little ram's horn.  Shell
+or horn, it is very curious.  How do things like that find their
+way into the stone?
+
+Treasures and curiosities make my pockets bulge with pebbles.  It
+is late and the little ducklings have had all they want to eat.
+Come along, youngsters, let's go home.  My blistered heel is
+forgotten in my excitement.
+The walk back is a delight.  A voice sings in my ear, an
+untranslatable voice, softer than any language and bewildering as a
+dream.  It speaks to me for the first time of the mysteries of the
+pond; it glorifies the heavenly insect which I hear moving in the
+empty snail shell, its temporary cage; it whispers the secrets of
+the rock, the gold filings, the faceted jewels, the ram's horn
+turned to stone.
+
+Poor simpleton, smother your joy! I arrive.  My parents catch sight
+of my bulging pockets, with their disgraceful load of stones.  The
+cloth has given way under the rough and heavy burden.
+
+"You rascal!" says father, at sight of the damage.  "I send you to
+mind the ducks and you amuse yourself picking up stones, as though
+there weren't enough of them all round the house! Make haste and
+throw them away!"
+
+Broken hearted, I obey.  Diamonds, gold dust, petrified ram's horn,
+heavenly beetle are all flung on a rubbish heap outside the door.
+
+Mother bewails her lot: "A nice thing, bringing up children to see
+them turn out so badly! You'll bring me to my grave.  Green stuff I
+don't mind: it does for the rabbits.  But stones, which ruin your
+pockets; poisonous animals, which'll sting your hand: what good are
+they to you, silly?  There's no doubt about it: some one has thrown
+a spell over you!"
+
+Yes, my poor mother, you were right, in your simplicity: a spell
+had been cast upon me; I admit it today.  When it is hard enough to
+earn one's bit of bread, does not improving one's mind but render
+one more meet for suffering?  Of what avail is the torment of
+learning to the derelicts of life?
+
+A deal better off am I, at this late hour, dogged by poverty and
+knowing that the diamonds of the duck pool were rock crystal, the
+gold dust mica, the stone horn an Ammonite and the sky-blue beetle
+a Hoplia! We poor men would do better to mistrust the joys of
+knowledge: let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace,
+flee the temptations of the pond, mind our ducks and leave to
+others, more favored by fortune, the job of explaining the world's
+mechanism, if the spirit moves them.
+
+And yet no! Alone among living creatures, man has the thirst for
+knowledge; he alone pries into the mysteries of things.  The least
+among us will utter his whys and his wherefores, a fine pain
+unknown to the brute beast.  If these questionings come from us
+with greater persistence, with a more imperious authority, if they
+divert us from the quest of lucre, life's only object in the eyes
+of most men, does it become us to complain?  Let us be careful not
+to do so, for that would be denying the best of all our gifts.
+
+Let us strive, on the contrary, within the measure of our capacity,
+to force a gleam of light from the vast unknown; let us examine and
+question and, here and there, wrest a few shreds of truth.  We
+shall sink under the task; in the present ill ordered state of
+society, we shall end, perhaps, in the workhouse.  Let us go ahead
+for all that: our consolation shall be that we have increased by
+one atom the general mass of knowledge, the incomparable treasure
+of mankind.
+
+As this modest lot has fallen to me, I will return to the pond,
+notwithstanding the wise admonitions and the bitter tears which I
+once owed to it.  I will return to the pond, but not to that of the
+small ducks, the pond aflower with illusions: those ponds do not
+occur twice in a lifetime.  For luck like that, you must be in all
+the new glory of your first breeches and your first ideas.
+
+Many another have I come upon since that distant time, ponds very
+much richer and, moreover, explored with the ripened eye of
+experience.  Enthusiastically I searched them with the net, stirred
+up their mud, ransacked their trailing weeds.  None in my memories
+comes up to the first, magnified in its delights and mortifications
+by the marvelous perspective of the years.
+
+Nor would any of them suit my plans of today.  Their world is too
+vast.  I should lose myself in their immensities, where life swarms
+freely in the sun.  Like the ocean, they are infinite in their
+fruitfulness.  And then any assiduous watching, undisturbed by
+passers by, is an impossibility on the public way.  What I want is
+a pond on an extremely reduced scale, sparingly stocked in my own
+fashion an artificial pond standing permanently on my study table.
+
+A louis has been overlooked in a corner of the drawer.  I can spend
+it without seriously jeopardizing the domestic balance.  Let me
+make this gift to science, who, I fear, will be none too much
+obliged to me.  A gorgeous equipment may be all very well for
+laboratories wherein the cells and fibers of the dead are consulted
+at great expense; but such magnificence is of doubtful utility when
+we have to study the actions of the living.  It is the humble
+makeshift, of no value, that stumbles on the secrets of life.
+
+What did the best results of my studies of instinct cost me?
+Nothing but time and, above all, patience.  My extravagant
+expenditure of twenty francs, therefore, will be a risky
+speculation if devoted to the purchase of an apparatus of study.
+It will bring me in nothing in the way of fresh views, of that I am
+convinced.  However, let us try.
+
+The blacksmith makes me the framework of a cage out of a few iron
+rods.  The joiner, who is also a glazier on occasion--for, in my
+village, you have to be a Jack-of-all-trades if you would make both
+ends meet--sets the framework on a wooden base and supplies it with
+a movable board as a lid; he fixes thick panes of glass in the four
+sides.  Behold the apparatus, complete, with a bottom of tarred
+sheet iron and a trap to let the water out.
+
+The makers express themselves satisfied with their work, a singular
+novelty in their respective shops, where many an inquisitive caller
+has wondered what use I intend to make of my little glass trough.
+The thing creates a certain stir.  Some insist that it is meant to
+hold my supplies of oil and to take the place of the receptacle in
+general use in our parts, the urn dug out of a block of stone.
+What would those utilitarians have thought of my crazy mind, had
+they known that my costly gear would merely serve to let me watch
+some wretched animals kicking about in the water!
+
+Smith and glazier are content with their work.  I myself am
+pleased.  For all its rustic air, the apparatus does not lack
+elegance.  It looks very well, standing on a little table in front
+of a window visited by the sun for the greater part of the day.
+Its holding capacity is some ten or eleven gallons.  What shall we
+call it?  An aquarium?  No, that would be too pretentious and
+would, very unjustly, suggest the aquatic toy filled with rock
+work, waterfalls and goldfish beloved of the dwellers in suburbia.
+Let us preserve the gravity of serious things and not treat my
+learned trough as though it were a drawing room futility.  We will
+call it the glass pond.
+
+I furnish it with a heap of those limy incrustations wherewith
+certain springs in the neighborhood cover the dead clump of rushes.
+It is light, full of holes and gives a faint suggestion of a coral
+reef.  Moreover, it is covered with a short, green, velvety moss, a
+downy sward of infinitesimal pond weed.  I count on this modest
+vegetation to keep the water in a reasonably wholesome state,
+without driving me to frequent renewals which would disturb the
+work of my colonies.  Sanitation and quiet are the first conditions
+of success.  Now the stocked pond will not be long in filling
+itself with gases unfit to breathe, with putrid effluvia and other
+animal refuse; it will become a sink in which life will have killed
+life.  Those dregs must disappear as soon as they are formed, must
+be burnt and purified; and from their oxidized ruins there must
+even rise a perfect life-giving gas, so that the water may retain
+an unchangeable store of the breathable element.  The plant effects
+this purification in its sewage farm of green cells.
+
+When the sun beats upon the glass pond, the work of the water weeds
+is a sight to behold.  The green-carpeted reef is lit up with an
+infinity of scintillating points and assumes the appearance of a
+fairy lawn of velvet, studded with thousands of diamond pin's
+heads.  From this exquisite jewelry pearls break loose continuously
+and are at once replaced by others in the generating casket; slowly
+they rise, like tiny globes of light.  They spread on every side.
+It is a constant display of fireworks in the depths of the water.
+
+Chemistry tells us that, thanks to its green matter and the
+stimulus of the sun's rays, the weeds decompose the carbonic acid
+gas wherewith the water is impregnated by the breathing of its
+inhabitants and the corruption of the organic refuse; it retains
+the carbon, which is wrought into fresh tissues; it exhales the
+oxygen in tiny bubbles.  These partly dissolve in the water and
+partly reach the surface, where their froth supplies the atmosphere
+with an excess of breathable gas.  The dissolved portion keeps the
+colonists of the pond alive and causes the unhealthy products to be
+oxidized and disappear.
+
+Old hand though I be, I take an interest in this trite marvel of a
+bundle of weeds perpetuating hygienic principles in a stagnant
+pool; I look with a delighted eye upon the inexhaustible spray of
+spreading bubbles; I see in imagination the prehistoric times when
+seaweed, the first-born of plants, produced the first atmosphere
+for living things to breathe at the time when the silt of the
+continents was beginning to emerge.  What I see before my eyes,
+between the glass panes of my trough, tells me the story of the
+planet surrounding itself with pure air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII  THE CADDIS WORM
+
+Whom shall I lodge in my glass trough, kept permanently wholesome
+by the action of the water weeds?  I shall keep caddis worms, those
+expert dressers.  Few of the self-clothing insects surpass them in
+ingenious attire.  The ponds in my neighborhood supply me with five
+or six species, each possessing an art of its own.  Today, but one
+of these shall receive historical honors.
+
+I obtain it from the muddy bottomed, stagnant pools crammed with
+small reeds.  As far as one can judge from the habitation merely,
+it should be, according to the specialists, Limnophilus
+flavicornis, whose work has earned for the whole corporation the
+pretty name of Phryganea, a Greek term meaning a bit of wood, a
+stick.  In a no less expressive fashion, the Provencal peasant
+calls it lou portofais, lou porto-caneu.  This is the little grub
+that carries through the still waters a faggot of tiny fragments
+fallen from the reeds.
+
+Its sheath, a travelling house, is a composite and barbaric piece
+of work, a megalithic pile wherein art, retires in favor of
+amorphous strength.  The materials are many and sundry, so much so
+that we might imagine that we had the work of dissimilar builders
+before our eyes, if frequent transitions did not tell us the
+contrary.
+
+With the young ones, the novices, it starts with a sort of deep
+basket in rustic wicker-work.  The twigs employed present nearly
+always the same characteristics and are none other than bits of
+small, stiff roots, long steeped and peeled under water.  The grub
+that has made a find of these fibers saws them with its mandibles
+and cuts them into little straight sticks, which it fixes one by
+one to the edge of its basket, always crosswise, perpendicular to
+the axis of the work.
+
+Picture a circle surrounded by a bristling mass of tangents, or
+rather a polygon with its sides extended in all directions.  On
+this assemblage of straight lines we place repeated layers of
+others, without troubling about similarity of position, thus
+obtaining a sort of ragged fascine, whose sticks project on every
+side.  Such is the bastion of the child grub, an excellent system
+of defense, with its continuous pile of spikes, but difficult to
+steer through the tangle of aquatic plants.
+
+Sooner or later, the worm forsakes this kind of caltrop which
+catches on to everything.  It was a basket maker, it now turns
+carpenter; it builds with little beams and joists--that is to say,
+with round bits of wood, browned by the water, often as wide as a
+thick straw and a finger's-breadth long, more or less--taking them
+as chance supplies them.
+
+For the rest, there is something of everything in this rag bag:
+bits of stubble, fag ends of rushes, scraps of plants, fragments of
+some tiny twig or other, chips of wood, shreds of bark, largish
+grains, especially the seeds of the yellow iris, which were red
+when they fell from their capsules and are now black as jet.
+
+The heterogeneous collection is piled up anyhow.  Some pieces are
+fixed lengthwise, others across, others aslant.  There are angles
+in this direction and angles in the other, resulting in sharp
+little turns and twists; the big is mixed with the little, the
+correct rubs shoulders with the shapeless.  It is not an edifice,
+it is a frenzied conglomeration.  Sometimes, a fine disorder is an
+effect of art.  This is not so here: the work of the Caddis worm is
+not a masterpiece worth signing.
+
+And this mad heaping up follows straight upon the regular basket
+work of the start.  The young grub's fascine did not lack a certain
+elegance, with its dainty laths, all stacked crosswise,
+methodically; and, lo and behold, the builder, grown larger, more
+experienced and, one would think, more skilful, abandons the
+orderly plan to adopt another which is wild and incoherent! There
+is no transition stage between the two systems.  The extravagant
+pile rises abruptly from the original basket.  But that we often
+find the two kinds of work placed one above the other, we would not
+dare ascribe to them a common origin.  The fact of their being
+joined together is the only thing that makes them one, in spite of
+the incongruity.
+
+But the two storeys do not last indefinitely.  When the worm has
+grown slightly and is housed to its satisfaction in a heap of
+joists, it abandons the basket of its childhood, which has become
+too narrow and is now a troublesome burden.  It cuts through its
+sheath, lops off and lets go the stern, the original work.  When
+moving to a higher and roomier flat, it understands how to lighten
+its portable house by breaking off a part of it.  All that remains
+is the upper floor, which is enlarged at the aperture, as and when
+required, by the same architecture of disordered beams.
+
+Side by side with these cases, which are mere ugly faggots, we find
+others just as often of exquisite beauty and composed entirely of
+tiny shells.  Do they come from the same workshop?  It takes very
+convincing proofs to make us believe this.  Here is order with its
+charm, there disorder with its hideousness; on the one hand a
+dainty mosaic of shells, on the other a clumsy heap of sticks.  And
+yet it is all produced by the same laborer.
+
+Proofs abound.  On some case which offends the eye with the want of
+arrangement in its bits of wood, patches are apt to appear which
+are quite regular and made of shells; in the same way, it is not
+unusual to see a horrid tangle of joists braced to a masterpiece of
+shell work.  One feels a certain annoyance at seeing the pretty
+sheath so barbarously spoilt.
+
+This mixed construction tells us that the rustic stacker of wooden
+beams excels, when occasion offers, in making elegant shell
+pavements and that it practices rough carpentry and delicate mosaic
+work indifferently.  In the latter instance, the scabbard is made,
+above all, of Planorbes, selected among the smaller of these pond
+snails and laid flat.  Without being scrupulously regular, the
+work, at its best, does not lack merit.  The pretty, close-whorled
+spirals, placed one against the other on the same level, have a
+very pleasing general effect.  No pilgrim returning from Santiago
+de Compostella ever slung handsomer tippet from his shoulders.
+
+But only too often the caddis worm dashes ahead, regardless of
+proportion.  The big is joined to the small, the exaggerated
+suddenly stands out, to the great detriment of order.  Side by side
+with tiny Planorbes, each at most the size of a lentil, others are
+fixed as large as one's fingernail; and these cannot possibly be
+fitted in correctly.  They overlap the regular parts and spoil
+their finish.
+
+To crown the disorder, the caddis worm adds to the flat spirals any
+dead shell that comes handy, without distinction of species,
+provided it be not excessively large.  I notice, in its collection
+of bric-a-brac, the Physa, the Paludina, the Limnaea, the Amber
+snail [all pond snails] and even the Pisidium [a bivalve], that
+little twin-valved casket.
+
+Land shells, swept into the ditches by the rains after the inmate's
+death, are accepted quite as readily.  In the work made of the
+Mollusk's cast-off clothing, I find encrusted the spindle shell of
+the Clausilium, the key shell of the pupa, the spiral of the
+smaller Helix, the yawning volute of the Vitrina, or glass snail,
+the turret shell of the Bulimus [all land snails], denizens all of
+the fields.  In short, the caddis worm builds with more or less
+everything that comes from the plant or the dead mollusk.  Among
+the diversified refuse of the pond, the only materials rejected are
+those of a gravelly nature.  Stone and pebble are excluded from the
+building with a care that is very rarely absent.  This is a
+question of hydrostatics to which we will return presently.  For
+the moment, let us try to follow the construction of the scabbard.
+
+In a tumbler small enough to allow of easy and precise observation,
+I install three or four caddis worms, extracted this moment from
+their sheaths with every possible precaution.  After a number of
+attempts which have at last shown me the right road, I place at
+their disposal two kinds of materials, possessing opposite
+qualities; the supple and the firm, the soft and the hard.  On the
+one hand, we have a live aquatic plant, such as watercress, for
+instance, or ombrelle d'eau, having at its base a tufty bunch of
+fine white roots about as thick as a horsehair.  In these soft
+tresses, the caddis worm, which observes a vegetarian diet, will
+find at one and the same time the wherewithal to build and eat.  On
+the other hand, we have a little faggot of bits of wood, very dry,
+equal in length and each possessing the thickness of a good sized
+pin.  The two sorts of building material lie side by side, mingling
+their threads and sticks.  The animal can make its choice from the
+lump.
+
+A few hours later, having recovered from the shock of losing its
+sheath, the caddis worm sets to work to manufacture a new one.  It
+settles across a bunch of tangled rootlets, which are brought
+together by the builder's legs and more or less arranged by the
+undulating movement of the hinder part.  This gives a kind of
+incoherent and ill defined suspended belt, a narrow hammock with a
+number of loose catches; for the various bits of which it is made
+up are respected by the teeth and extended from place to place
+beyond the main cords of the roots.  Here, without much trouble, is
+the support, suitably fixed by natural moorings.  A few threads of
+silk, casually distributed, make the frail combination a trifle
+more secure.
+
+And now to the work of building.  Supported by the suspended belt,
+the caddis worm stretches itself and thrusts out its middle legs,
+which, being longer than the others, are the grapnels intended to
+seize things at a distance.  It meets a bit of root, fastens on to
+it, climbs above the point gripped, as though it were measuring the
+piece to a requisite length, and then, with the fine scissors of
+its mandibles, cuts the string.
+
+There is at once a brief recoil, which brings the animal back to
+the level of the hammock.  The bit detached lies across the worm's
+chest, held in its forelegs, which turn it, twist it, wave it
+about, lay it down, lift it up, as though trying for the best
+position.  Those forelegs make admirably dexterous arms.  Being
+less long than the other two pairs, they are brought into immediate
+contact with those primordial implements, the mandibles and the
+spinneret.  Their delicate terminal jointing, with a movable and
+crooked finger, is the caddis worm's equivalent of our hand.  They
+are the working legs.  The second pair, which are exceptionally
+long, serve to spear distant materials and to give the worker a
+firm footing when measuring a piece and cutting it with the pliers.
+Lastly, the hind legs, of medium length, afford a support when the
+others are busy.
+
+The caddis worm, I was saying, with the piece which it has removed
+held crosswise to its chest, retreats a little way along its
+suspended hammock until the spinneret is level with the support
+furnished by the close tangle of rootlets.  With a quick movement,
+it shifts its burden, gets it as nearly by the middle as it can, so
+that the two ends stick out equally on either side, and chooses the
+spot to place it, whereupon the spinneret sets to work at once,
+while the little fore legs hold the scrap of root motionless in its
+transversal position.  The soldering is effected with a touch of
+silk in the middle of the bit and along a certain distance to the
+right and left, as far as the bending of the head permits.
+
+Without delay, other sticks are speared in like manner at a
+distance, cut off and placed in position.  As the immediate
+neighborhood is stripped, the material is gathered at a yet greater
+distance and the caddis worm bends even farther from its support,
+which now holds only its last few segments.  It is a curious
+gymnastic display, that of this soft, hanging spine turning and
+swaying, while the grapnels feel in every direction for a thread.
+
+All this labor results in a sort of casing of little white cords.
+The work lacks firmness and regularity.  Nevertheless, judging by
+the builder's methods, I can see that the building would not be
+devoid of merit if the materials gave it a better chance.  The
+caddis worm estimates the size of its pieces very fairly; it cuts
+them all to nearly the same length; it always arranges them
+crosswise on the margin of the case; it fixes them by the middle.
+
+Nor is this all: the manner of working helps the general
+arrangement considerably.  When the bricklayer is building the
+narrow shaft of a factory chimney, he stands in the center of his
+turret and turns round and round while gradually laying new rows.
+The caddis worm acts in the same way.  It twists round in its
+sheath; it adopts without inconvenience whatever position it
+pleases, so as to bring its spinneret full face with the point to
+be gummed.  There is no straining of the neck to left or right, no
+throwing back of the head to reach points behind.  The animal has
+constantly before it, within the exact range of its implements, the
+place at which the bit is to be fixed.  When the piece is soldered,
+the worm turns a little aside, to a length equal to that of the
+last soldering, and here, along an extent which hardly ever varies,
+an extent determined by the swing which its head is able to give,
+it fixes the next piece.
+
+These several conditions ought to result in a geometrically ordered
+dwelling, having a regular polygon as an opening.  Then how comes
+it that the cylinder of bits of root is so confused, so clumsily
+fashioned?  The reason is this: the worker possesses talent, but
+the materials do not lend themselves to accurate work.  The
+rootlets supply stumps of very uneven shape and thickness.  They
+include big and small ones, straight and bent, simple and ramified.
+To combine all these dissimilar pieces into an orderly whole is
+hardly possible, all the more so as the caddis worm does not appear
+to attach very much importance to its cylinder, which is a
+temporary work, hurriedly constructed to afford a speedy shelter.
+Matters are urgent; and very soft fibers, clipped with a bite of
+the mandibles, are more quickly gathered and more easily put
+together than joists, which require the patient work of the saw.
+The inaccurate cylinder, in short, held in position by numerous guy
+ropes, is a base upon which a solid and definite structure will
+rise before long.  Soon, the original work will crumble to ruins
+and disappear, whereas the new one, a permanent structure, will
+even outlast the owner.
+
+The insects reared in a tumbler show yet another method of building
+the first dwelling.  This time, the caddis worm is given a few very
+leafy stalks of pond weed (Potamogeton densum) and a bundle of
+small dry twigs.  It perches on a leaf, which the nippers of the
+mandibles cut half across.  The portion left untouched will act as
+a lanyard and give the necessary steadiness to the early
+operations.
+
+From an adjoining leaf a section is cut out entirely, an angular
+and good sized piece.  There is plenty of material and no need for
+economy.  The piece is soldered with silk to the strip which was
+not wholly cut off.  The result of three or four similar operations
+is to surround the Caddis worm with a conical bag, whose wide mouth
+is scalloped with pointed and very irregular notches.  The work of
+the nippers continues; fresh pieces are fixed, from one to another,
+inside the funnel, not far from the edge, so that the bag
+lengthens, tapers and ends by wrapping the animal in a light and
+floating drapery.
+
+Thus clad for the time being, either in the fine silk of the pond
+weed or in the linsey-woolsey supplied by the roots of the
+watercress, the caddis worm begins to think of building a more
+solid sheath.  The present casing will serve as a foundation for
+the stronger building.  But the necessary materials are seldom near
+at hand: you have to go and fetch them, you have to move your
+position, an effort which has been avoided until now.  With this
+object, the caddis worm cuts its moorings, that is to say, the
+rootlets which keep the cylinder fixed, or else the half-severed
+leaf of pond weed on which the cone-shaped bag has come into being.
+
+The worm is now free.  The smallness of the artificial pond, the
+tumbler, soon brings it into touch with what it is seeking.  This
+is a little faggot of dry twigs, which I have selected of equal
+length and of slight thickness.  Displaying greater care than it
+did when treating the slender roots, the carpenter measures out the
+requisite length on the joist.  The distance to which it has to
+extend its body in order to reach the point where the break will be
+made tells it pretty accurately what length of stick it wants.
+
+The piece is patiently sawn off with the mandibles; it is next
+taken in the fore legs and held crosswise below the neck.  The
+backward movement which brings the caddis worm home also brings the
+bit of twig to the edge of the tube.  Thereupon, the methods
+employed in working with the scraps of root are renewed in
+precisely the same manner.  The sticks are scaffolded to the
+regulation height, all alike in length, amply soldered in the
+middle and free at either end.
+
+With the picked materials provided, the carpenter has turned out a
+work of some elegance.  The joists are all arranged crosswise,
+because this way is the handiest for carrying the sticks and
+putting them in position; they are fixed by the middle, because the
+two arms that hold the stick while the spinneret does its work
+require an equal grasp on either side; each soldering covers a
+length which is seen to be practically invariable, because it is
+equal to the width described by the head in bending first to this
+side and then to that when the silk is emitted; the whole assumes a
+polygonal shape, not far removed from a rectilinear pentagon,
+because, between laying one piece and the next, the caddis worm
+turns by the width of an arc corresponding with the length of a
+soldering.  The regularity of the method produces the regularity of
+the work; but it is essential, of course, that the materials should
+lend themselves to precise coordination.
+
+In its natural pond, the caddis worm does not often have at its
+disposal the picked joists which I give it in the tumbler.  It
+comes across something of everything; and that something of
+everything it employs as it finds
+it.  Bits of wood, large seeds, empty shells, stubble stalks,
+shapeless fragments are used in the building for better or for
+worse, just as they occur, without being trimmed by the saw; and
+this jumble, the result of chance, results in a shockingly faulty
+structure.
+
+The caddis worm does not forget its talents; but it lacks choice
+pieces.  Give it a proper timber yard and it at once reverts to
+correct architecture, of which it carries the plans within itself.
+With small, dead pond snails, all of the same size, it fashions a
+splendid patchwork scabbard; with a cluster of slender roots,
+reduced by rotting to their stiff, straight, woody axis, it
+manufactures pretty specimens of wicker work which could serve as
+models to our basket makers.
+
+Let us watch it at work when it is unable to use its favorite
+joist.  There is no point in giving it clumsy building stones; that
+would only bring us back to the uncouth sheaths.  Its propensity to
+make use of soaked seeds, those of the iris, for instance, suggests
+that I might try grains.  I select rice, which, because of its
+hardness, will be tantamount to wood and, because of its clean
+whiteness and its oval shape, will lend itself to artistic masonry.
+
+Obviously, my denuded caddis worms cannot start their work with
+bricks of this kind.  Where would they fix their first layer?  They
+must have a foundation, quick and easy to build.  This is once more
+supplied by a temporary cylinder of watercress roots.  On this
+support follow the grains of rice, which, grouped one atop the
+other, straight or slanting, end by giving a magnificent turret of
+ivory.  Next to the sheaths made of tiny snail shells, this is the
+prettiest thing with which the caddis worm's industry has furnished
+me.  A fine sense of order has returned, because the materials,
+regular and of identical character, have cooperated with the
+correct method of the worker.
+
+The two demonstrations are enough.  Sticks and grains of rice make
+it plain that the caddis worm is not the bungler that one would
+expect from the monstrous buildings in the pond.  Those Cyclopean
+piles, those mad conglomerations, are the inevitable results of
+chance finds, which are used for the best because there is no
+choice.  The water carpenter has an art of its own, has method and
+rules of symmetry.  When well served by fortune, it is quite able
+to turn out good work; when ill-served, it acts like others: the
+work which it turns out is bad.  Poverty makes for ugliness.
+
+There is another matter wherein the caddis worm deserves our
+attention.  With a perseverance which repeated trials do not tire,
+it makes itself a new tube when I strip it.  This is opposed to the
+habits of the generality of insects, which do not recommence the
+thing once done, but simply continue it according to the usual
+rules, taking no account of the ruined or vanished portions.  The
+caddis worm is a striking exception: it starts again.  Whence does
+it derive this capacity?
+
+I begin by learning that, given a sudden alarm, it readily leaves
+its scabbard.  When I go fishing for caddis worms, I put them in
+tin boxes, containing no other moisture than that wherewith my
+catches are soaked.  I heap them up loosely, to avoid any grievous
+tumult and to fill the space at my disposal as best I may.  I take
+no further precaution.  This is enough to keep the caddis worms in
+good condition during the two or three hours which I devote to
+fishing and to walking home.
+
+On my return, I find that a number of them have left their houses.
+They are swarming naked among the empty scabbards and those still
+occupied by their inhabitants.  It is a pitiful sight to see these
+evicted ones dragging their bare abdomens and their frail
+respiratory threads over the bristling sticks.  There is no great
+harm done, however; and I empty the whole lot into the glass pond.
+
+Not one resumes possession of an unoccupied sheath.  Perhaps it
+would take them too long to find one of the exact size.  They think
+it better to abandon the old clouts and to manufacture cases new
+from top to bottom.  The process is a rapid one.  By the next day,
+with the materials wherein the glass trough abounds--bundles of
+twigs and tufts of watercress--all the denuded worms have made
+themselves at least a temporary home in the form of a tube of
+rootlets.
+
+The lack of water, combined with the excitement of the crowding in
+the boxes, has upset my captives greatly; and, scenting a grave
+peril, they have made off hurriedly, doffing the cumbersome jacket,
+which is difficult to carry.  They have stripped themselves so as
+to flee with greater ease.  The alarm cannot have been due to me:
+there are not many simpletons like myself who are interested in the
+affairs of the pond; and the caddis worm has not been cautioned
+against their tricks.  The sudden desertion of the crib has
+certainly some other reason than man's molestations.
+
+I catch a glimpse of this reason, the real one.  The glass pond was
+originally occupied by a dozen Dytisci, or water beetles, whose
+diving performances are so curious to watch.  One day, meaning no
+harm and for want of a better receptacle, I fling among them a
+couple of handfuls of caddis worms.  Blunderer that I am, what have
+I done! The corsairs, hiding in the rugged corners of the rock
+work, at once perceive the windfall.  They rise to the surface with
+great strokes of their oars; they hasten and fling themselves upon
+the crowd of carpenters.  Each pirate grabs a sheath by the middle
+and strives to rip it open by tearing off shells and sticks.  While
+this ferocious enucleation continues with the object of reaching
+the dainty morsel contained within, the caddis worm, close pressed,
+appears at the mouth of the sheath, slips out and quickly decamps
+under the eyes of the Dytiscus, who appears to notice nothing.
+
+I have said before that the trade of killing can dispense with
+intelligence.  The brutal ripper of sheaths does not see the little
+white sausage that slips between his legs, passes under his fangs
+and madly flees.  He continues to tear away the outer case and to
+tug at the silken lining.  When the breach is made, he is quite
+crestfallen at not finding what he expected.
+
+Poor fool! Your victim went out under your nose and you never saw
+it.  The worm has sunk to the bottom and taken refuge in the
+mysteries of the rock work.  If things were happening in the large
+expanse of a pond, it is clear that, with their system of
+expeditious removals, most of the lodgers would escape scot-free.
+Fleeing to a distance and recovering from the sharp alarm, they
+would build themselves a new scabbard and all would be over until
+the next attack, which would be baffled afresh by the selfsame
+trick.
+
+In my narrow trough, things take a more tragic turn.  When the
+sheaths are done for, when the caddis worms that are too slow in
+making off have been eaten up, the Water beetles return to the
+rockery at the bottom.  Here, sooner or later, there are lamentable
+happenings.  The naked fugitives are discovered and, succulent
+morsels that they are, are forthwith torn to pieces and devoured.
+Within twenty-four hours, not one of my band of caddis worms is
+left alive.  In order to continue my studies, I had to lodge the
+water beetles elsewhere.
+
+Under natural conditions, the caddis worm has its persecutors, the
+most formidable of whom appears to be the Water beetle.  When we
+consider that, to thwart the brigand's attacks, it has invented the
+idea of quitting its scabbard with all speed, its tactics are
+certainly most appropriate; but, in that case, an exceptional
+condition becomes obligatory, namely, the capacity for recommencing
+the work.  This most unusual gift of recommencing it possesses in a
+high measure.  I am ready to see its origin in the persecutions of
+the Dytiscus and other pirates.  Necessity is the mother of
+industry.
+
+Certain caddis worms, of the Sericostoma and Leptocerus species,
+clothe themselves in grains of sand and do not leave the bed of the
+stream.  On a clear bottom, swept by the current, they walk about
+from one bank of verdure to the other and do not think of coming to
+the surface to float and sail in the sunlight.  The collectors of
+sticks and shells are more highly privileged.  They can remain on
+the level of the water indefinitely, with no other support than
+their skiff, can rest in unsubmersible flotillas and can even shift
+their place by working the rudder.
+
+To what do they owe this privilege?  Are we to look upon the bundle
+of sticks as a sort of raft whose density is less than that of the
+water?  Can the shells, which are always empty and able to contain
+a few bubbles of air in their spiral, be floats?  Can the big
+joists, which break in so ugly a fashion the none too great
+regularity of the work, serve to buoy up the over-heavy raft?  In
+short, is the caddis worm versed in the laws of equilibrium and
+does it choose its pieces, now lighter and now heavier as the case
+may be, so as to constitute a whole that is capable of floating?
+The following facts are a refutation of any such hydrostatic
+calculations in the animal.
+
+I remove a number of caddis worms from their sheaths and submit
+these, as they are, to the test of water.  Whether formed wholly of
+fibrous remnants or of mixed materials, not one of them floats.
+The scabbards made of shells go to the bottom with the swiftness of
+a bit of gravel; the others sink gently.  I experiment with the
+separate materials one by one.  No shell remains on the surface,
+not even among the Planorbes, which a many-whorled spiral ought,
+one would think, to keep afloat.  The fibrous remnants must be
+divided into two categories.  The first, darkened by time and
+soaked with moisture, sink to the bottom.  These are the most
+plentiful.  The second, considerably fewer in number, of more
+recent date and less saturated with water, float very well.  The
+general result is immersion, as in the case of the intact
+scabbards.  I may add that the animal, when removed from its tube,
+is also unable to float.
+
+Then how does the caddis worm manage to remain on the surface
+without the support of the grasses, considering that itself and its
+sheath are both heavier than water?  Its secret is soon revealed.
+I place a few high and dry on a sheet of blotting paper, which will
+absorb the excess of liquid unfavorable to successful observation.
+Outside its natural environment, the animal moves about violently
+and restlessly.  With its body half out of the scabbard, this time
+composed entirely of fibrous matter, it clutches with its feet at
+the supporting plane.  Then, contracting itself, it draws the
+scabbard towards it, half-raising it and sometimes even making it
+assume a vertical position.  Even so do the Bulimi move along,
+lifting their shell as they complete each crawling step.
+
+After a couple of minutes in the free air, I replace the caddis
+worm in the water.  This time, it floats, but like a cylinder with
+too much weight below.  The sheath remains vertical, with its
+hinder orifice level with the water.  Soon, an air bubble escapes
+from the orifice.  Deprived of this buoy, the skiff at once goes
+down.
+
+The result is the same with the caddis worms in shell casings.  At
+first, they float, straight up on end, and then dip under and sink,
+faster than the others, after sending out an air bubble or two
+through the back window.
+
+That is enough: the secret is out.  When cased in wood or in
+shells, the caddis worms, which are always heavier than water, are
+able to keep on the surface by means of a temporary air balloon
+which decreases the density of the whole structure.
+
+This apparatus works in the simplest manner.  Consider the rear of
+the sheath.  It is truncated, wide open and supplied with a
+membranous partition, the work of the spinneret.  A round hole
+occupies the center of this screen.  Beyond it lies the interior of
+the scabbard, which is smoothly lined and wadded with satin,
+however rough the exterior may be.  Armed at the stern with two
+hooks which bite into the silky lining, the animal is able to move
+backwards and forwards at will inside the cylinder, to fix its
+grapnels at whatever point it pleases and thus to keep a hold on
+the cylinder while the six legs and the fore part are outside.
+
+When at rest, the body remains indoors entirely and the grub
+occupies the whole of the tube.  But let it contract ever so little
+towards the front, or, better still, let it stick out a part of its
+body: a vacuum is formed behind this sort of piston, which may be
+compared with that of a pump.  Thanks to the rear window, a valve
+without a plug, this vacuum at once fills, thus renewing the
+aerated water around the gills, a soft fleece of hairs distributed
+over the back and belly.
+
+The piston stroke affects only the work of breathing; it does not
+alter the density, makes hardly any change in that which is heavier
+than water.  To lighten the weight, the caddis worm must first rise
+to the surface.  With this object, it scales the grasses of one
+support after the other; it clambers up, sticking to its purpose in
+spite of the drawback of its faggot dragging through the tangle.
+When it has reached the goal, it lifts the rear end a little above
+the water and gives a stroke of the piston.  The vacuum thus
+obtained fills with air.  That is enough: skiff and boatman are in
+a position to float.  The now useless support of the grasses is
+abandoned.  The time has come for evolutions on the surface, in the
+glad sunlight.
+
+The caddis worm possesses no great talent as a navigator.  To turn
+round, to tack about, to shift its place slightly by a backward
+movement is all that it can do; and even that it does very
+clumsily.  The front part of the body, sticking out of the case,
+acts as a rudder.  Three or four times over, it rises abruptly,
+bends, comes down again and strikes the water.  These paddle
+strokes, repeated at intervals, carry the unskilled oarsman to
+fresh latitudes.  It becomes a voyage on the right seas when the
+crossing measures a hand's breadth.
+
+However, tacking on the surface of the water affords the caddis
+worm no pleasure.  It prefers to twitter in one spot, to remain
+stationary in flotillas.  When the time comes to return to the
+quiet of the mud bed at the bottom, the animal, having had enough
+of the sun, draws itself wholly into its sheath again and, with a
+piston stroke, expels the air from the back room.  The normal
+density is restored and it sinks slowly to the bottom.
+
+We see, therefore, that the caddis worm has not to trouble about
+hydrostatics when building its scabbard.  In spite of the
+incongruity of its work, in which the bulky and less dense portions
+seem to balance the more solid, concentrated part, it is not called
+upon to contrive an equipoise between the light and the heavy.  It
+has other artifices whereby to rise to the surface, to float and to
+dive down again.  The ascent is made by the ladder of the water
+weeds.  The average density of the sheath is of no importance, so
+long as the burden to be dragged is not beyond the animal's
+strength.  Besides, the weight of the load is greatly reduced when
+moved in the water.
+
+The admission of a bubble of air into the back chamber, which the
+animal ceases to occupy, allow it, without further to-do, to remain
+for an indefinite period on the surface.  To dive down again, the
+caddis worm has only to retreat entirely into its sheath.  The air
+is driven out; and the canoe, resuming its mean density, a greater
+specific density than that of water, goes under at once and
+descends of its own accord.
+
+There is, therefore, no choice of materials on the builder's part,
+no nice calculation of equilibrium, save for one condition, that no
+stony matter be admitted.  That apart, everything serves, large and
+small, joist and shell, seed and billet.  Built up at haphazard,
+all these things make an impregnable wall.  One point alone is
+essential: the weight of the whole must slightly exceed that of the
+water displaced; if not, there could be no steadiness at the bottom
+of the pond, without a perpetual anchorage struggling against the
+pull of the water.  In the same manner, quick submersion would be
+impossible at times when the surface became dangerous and the
+frightened creature wanted to leave it.
+
+Nor does this important heavier-than-water question call for lucid
+discernment, seeing that almost the whole of the sheath is
+constructed at the bottom of the pond, whither all the materials
+picked up at random, having descended once before, are likely to
+descend again.  In the sheaths, the parts capable of floating are
+very rare.  Without taking their specific levity into account,
+simply so as not to remain idle, the caddis worm fixed them to its
+bundle when sporting on the surface of the water.
+
+We have our submarines, in which hydraulic ingenuity displays its
+highest resources.  The caddis worms have theirs, which emerge,
+float on the surface, dip down and even stop at mid-depth by
+releasing gradually their surplus air.  And this apparatus, so
+perfectly balanced, so skilful, requires no knowledge on the part
+of its constructor.  It comes into being of itself, in accordance
+with the plans of the universal harmony of things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX  THE GREENBOTTLES
+
+I have wished for a few things in my life, none of them capable of
+interfering with the common weal.  I have longed to possess a pond,
+screened from the indiscretion of the passers by, close to my
+house, with clumps of rushes and patches of duckweed.  Here, in my
+leisure hours, in the shade of a willow, I should have meditated
+upon aquatic life, a primitive life, easier than our own, simpler
+in its affections and its brutalities.  I should have watched the
+unalloyed happiness of the mollusk, the frolics of the Whirligig,
+the figure-skating of the Hydrometra [a water bug known as the Pond
+skater], the dives of the Dytiscus beetle, the veering and tacking
+of the Notonecta [the water boatman], who, lying on her back, rows
+with two long oars, while her short forelegs, folded against her
+chest, wait to grab the coming prey.  I should have studied the
+eggs of the Planorbis, a glairy nebula wherein focuses of life are
+condensed even as suns are condensed in the nebulae of the heavens.
+I should have admired the nascent creature that turns, slowly turns
+in the orb of its egg and describes a volute, the draft, perhaps,
+of the future shell.  No planet circles round its center of
+attraction with greater geometrical accuracy.
+
+I should have brought back a few ideas from my frequent visits to
+the pond.  Fate decided otherwise: I was not to have my sheet of
+water.  I have tried the artificial pond, between four panes of
+glass.  A poor shift! Our laboratory aquariums are not even equal
+to the print left in the mud by a mule's hoof, when once a shower
+has filled the humble basin and life has stocked it with its
+marvels.
+
+In spring, with the hawthorn in flower and the crickets at their
+concerts, a second wish often came to me.  Along the road, I light
+upon a dead mole, a snake killed with a stone, victims both of
+human folly.  The mole was draining the soil and purging it of its
+vermin.  Finding him under his spade, the laborer broke his back
+for him and flung him over the hedge.  The snake, roused from her
+slumber by the soft warmth of April, was coming into the sun to
+shed her skin and take on a new one.  Man catches sight of her:
+'Ah, would you? ' says he.  'See me do something for which the
+world will thank me!'
+
+And the harmless beast, our auxiliary in the terrible battle which
+husbandry wages against the insect, has its head smashed in and
+dies.
+
+The two corpses, already decomposing, have begun to smell.  Whoever
+approaches with eyes that do not see turns away his head and passes
+on.  The observer stops and lifts the remains with his foot; he
+looks.  A world is swarming underneath; life is eagerly consuming
+the dead.  Let us replace matters as they were and leave death's
+artisans to their task.  They are engaged in a most deserving work.
+
+To know the habits of those creatures charged with the
+disappearance of corpses, to see them busy at their work of
+disintegration, to follow in detail the process of transmutation
+that makes the ruins of what has lived return apace into life's
+treasure house: these are things that long haunted my mind.  I
+regretfully left the mole lying in the dust of the road.  I had to
+go, after a glance at the corpse and its harvesters.  It was not
+the place for philosophizing over a stench.  What would people say
+who passed and saw me!
+
+And what will the reader himself say, if I invite him to that
+sight?  Surely, to busy one's self with those squalid sextons means
+soiling one's eyes and mind?  Not so, if you please! Within the
+domain of our restless curiosity, two questions stand out above all
+others: the question of the beginning and the question of the end.
+How does matter unite in order to assume life?  How does it
+separate when returning to inertia?  The pond, with its Planorbis
+eggs turning round and round, would have given us a few data for
+the first problem; the Mole, going bad under conditions not too
+repulsive, will tell us something about the second: he will show us
+the working of the crucible wherein all things are melted to begin
+anew.  A truce to nice delicacy! Odi profanum vulgus et arceo;
+hence, ye profane: you would not understand the mighty lesson of
+the rag tank.
+
+I am now in a position to realize my second wish.  I have space,
+air and quiet in the solitude of the harmas.  None will come here
+to trouble me, to smile or to be shocked at my investigations.  So
+far, so good; but observe the irony of things: now that I am rid of
+passers by, I have to fear my cats, those assiduous prowlers, who,
+finding my preparations, will not fail to spoil and scatter them.
+In anticipation of their misdeeds, I establish workshops in midair,
+whither none but genuine corruption agents can come, flying on
+their wings.  At different points in the enclosure, I plant reeds,
+three by three, which, tied at their free ends, form a stable
+tripod.  From each of these supports, I hang, at a man's height, an
+earthenware pan filled with fine sand and pierced at the bottom
+with a hole to allow the water to escape, if it should rain.  I
+garnish my apparatus with dead bodies.  The snake, the lizard, the
+toad receive the preference, because of their bare skins, which
+enable me better to follow the first attack and the work of the
+invaders.  I ring the changes with furred and feathered beasts.  A
+few children of the neighborhood, allured by pennies, are my
+regular purveyors.  Throughout the good season, they come running
+triumphantly to my door, with a snake at the end of a stick, or a
+lizard in a cabbage leaf.  They bring me the rat caught in a trap,
+the chicken dead of the pip, the mole slain by the gardener, the
+kitten killed by accident, the rabbit poisoned by some weed.  The
+business proceeds to the mutual satisfaction of sellers and buyer.
+No such trade had ever been known before in the village nor ever
+will be again.
+
+April ends; and the pans rapidly fill.  An ant, ever so small, is
+the first arrival.  I thought I should keep this intruder off by
+hanging my apparatus high above the ground: she laughs at my
+precautions.  A few hours after the deposit of the morsel, fresh
+still and possessing no appreciable smell, up comes the eager
+picker-up of trifles, scales the stems of the tripod in processions
+and starts the work of dissection.  If the joint suits her, she
+even goes to live in the sand of the pan and digs herself temporary
+platforms in order to work the rich find more at her ease.
+
+All through the season, from start to finish, she will always be
+the promptest, always the first to discover the dead animal, always
+the last to beat a retreat when nothing more remains than a heap of
+little bones bleached by the sun.  How does the vagabond, passing
+at a distance, know that, up there, invisible, high on the gibbet,
+there is something worth going for?  The others, the real knackers,
+wait for the meat to go bad; they are informed by the strength of
+the effluvia.  The ant, gifted with greater powers of scent,
+hurries up before there is any stench at all.  But, when the meat,
+now two days old and ripened by the sun, exhales its flavor, soon
+the master ghouls appear upon the scene: Dermestes [bacon beetles,
+small flesh-eating beetles] and Saprini [exceedingly small flesh-
+eating beetles], Silphae [carrion beetles] and Necrophori [burying
+beetles], flies and Staphylini [rove beetles], who attack the
+corpse, consume it and reduce it almost to nothing.  With the ant
+alone, who each time carries off a mere atom, the sanitary
+operation would take too long; with them, it is a quick business,
+especially as certain of them understand the process of chemical
+solvents.
+
+These last, who are high class scavengers, are entitled to first
+mention.  They are flies, of many various species.  If time
+permitted, each of those strenuous ones would deserve a special
+examination; but that would weary the patience of both the reader
+and the observer.  The habits of one will give us a summary notion
+of the habits of the rest.  We will therefore confine ourselves to
+the two principal subjects, namely, the Luciliae, or greenbottles,
+and the Sarcophagae, or grey flesh flies.
+
+The Luciliae--flies that glitter--are magnificent flies known to
+all of us.  Their metallic luster, generally a golden green, rivals
+that of our finest beetles, the Rosechafers, Buprestes and leaf
+beetles.  It gives one a shock of surprise to see so rich a garb
+adorn those workers in putrefaction.  Three species frequent my
+pans: Lucilia Caesar, LIN., L.  cadaverina, LIN., and L.  cuprea,
+ROB.  The first two, both of whom are gold-green, are plentiful;
+the third, who sports a coppery luster, is rare.  All three have
+red eyes, set in a silver border.
+
+Lucilia Caesar is larger than L.  cadaverina and also more forward
+in her business.  I catch her in labor on the 23rd of April.  She
+has settled in the spinal canal of a neck of mutton and is laying
+her eggs on the marrow.  For more than an hour, motionless in the
+gloomy cavity, she goes on packing her eggs.  I can just see her
+red eyes and her silvery face.  At last, she comes out.  I gather
+the fruit of her labor, an easy matter, for it all lies on the
+marrow, which I extract without touching the eggs.
+
+A census would seem important.  To take it at once is
+impracticable: the germs form a compact mass, which would be
+difficult to count.  The best thing is to rear the family in a jar
+and to reckon by the pupae buried in the sand.  I find a hundred
+and fifty-seven.  This is evidently but a minimum; for Lucilia
+Caesar and the others, as the observations that follow will tell
+me, lay in packets at repeated intervals.  It is a magnificent
+family, promising a fabulous legion to come.
+
+The greenbottles, I was saying, break up their laying into
+sections.  The following scene affords a proof of this.  A Mole,
+shrunk by a few days' evaporation, lies spread upon the sand of the
+pan.  At one point, the edge of the belly is raised and forms a
+deep arch.  Remark that the Greenbottles, like the rest of the
+flesh eating flies, do not trust their eggs to uncovered surfaces,
+where the heat of the sun's rays might endanger the existence of
+the delicate germs.  They want dark hiding places.  The favorite
+spot is the lower side of the dead animal, when this is accessible.
+
+In the present case, the only place of access is the fold formed by
+the edge of the belly.  It is here and here alone that this day's
+mothers are laying.  There are eight of them.  After exploring the
+piece and recognizing its good quality, they disappear under the
+arch, first this one, then that, or else several at a time.  They
+remain under the Mole for a considerable while.  Those outside
+wait, but go repeatedly to the threshold of the cavern to take a
+look at what is happening within and see whether the earlier ones
+have finished.  These come out at last, perch on the animal and
+wait in their turn.  Others at once take their place in the
+recesses of the cave.  They remain there for some time and then,
+having done their business, make room for more mothers and come
+forth into the sunlight.  This going in and out continues
+throughout the morning.
+
+We thus learn that the laying is effected by periodical emissions,
+broken with intervals of rest.  As long as she does not feel ripe
+eggs coming to her oviduct, the greenbottle remains in the sun,
+hovering to and fro and sipping modest mouthfuls from the carcass.
+But, as soon as a fresh stream descends from her ovaries, quick as
+lightning she makes for a propitious site whereon to deposit her
+burden.  It appears to be the work of several days thus to divide
+the total laying and to distribute it at different points.
+
+I carefully raise the animal under which these things are
+happening.  The egg laying mothers do not disturb themselves; they
+are far too busy.  Their ovipositor extended telescope fashion,
+they heap egg upon egg.  With the point of their hesitating,
+groping instrument, they try to lodge each germ, as it comes,
+farther into the mass.  Around the serious, red-eyed matrons, the
+Ants circle, intent on pillage.  Many of them make off with a
+greenbottle egg between their teeth.  I see some who, greatly
+daring, effect their theft under the ovipositor itself.  The layers
+do not put themselves out, let the ants have their way, remain
+impassive.  They know their womb to be rich enough to make good any
+such larceny.
+
+Indeed, what escapes the depredations of the ants promises a
+plenteous brood.  Let us come back a few days later and lift the
+mole again.  Underneath, in a pool of sanies, is a surging mass of
+swarming sterns and pointed heads, which emerge, wriggle and dive
+in again.  It suggests a seething billow.  It turns one's stomach.
+It is horrible, most horrible.  Let us steel ourselves against the
+sight: it will be worse elsewhere.
+
+Here is a fat snake.  Rolled into a compact whorl, she fills the
+whole pan.  The greenbottles are plentiful.  New ones arrive at
+every moment and, without quarrel or strife, take their place among
+the others, busily laying.  The spiral furrow left by the reptile's
+curves is the favorite spot.  Here alone, in the narrow space
+between the folds, are shelters against the heat of the sun.  The
+glistening Flies take their places, side by side, in rows; they
+strive to push their abdomen and their ovipositor as far forward as
+possible, at the risk of rumpling their wings and cocking them
+towards their heads.  The care of the person is neglected amid this
+serious business.  Placidly, with their red eyes turned outwards,
+they form a continuous cordon.  Here and there, at intervals, the
+rank is broken; layers leave their posts, come and walk about upon
+the snake, what time their ovaries ripen for another emission, and
+then hurry back, slip into the rank and resume the flow of germs.
+Despite these interruptions, the work of breeding goes fast.  In
+the course of one morning, the depths of the spiral furrow are hung
+with a continuous white bark, the heaped up eggs.  They come off in
+great slabs, free of any stain; they can be shoveled up, as it
+were, with a paper scoop.  It is a propitious moment if we wish to
+follow the evolution at close quarters.  I therefore gather a
+profusion of this white manna and lodge it in glass tubes, test
+tubes and jars, with the necessary provisions.
+
+The eggs, about a millimeter long, are smooth cylinders, rounded at
+both ends.  They hatch within twenty-four hours.  The first
+question that presents itself is this: how do the greenbottle grubs
+feed?  I know quite well what to give them, but I do not in the
+least see how they manage to consume it.  Do they eat, in the
+strict sense of the word?  I have reasons to doubt it.
+
+Let us consider the grub grown to a sufficient size.  It is the
+usual fly larva, the common maggot, shaped like an elongated cone,
+pointed in front, truncated behind, where two little red spots
+show, level with the skin: these are the breathing holes.  The
+front, which is called the head by stretching a word--for it is
+little more than the entrance to an intestine--the front is armed
+with two little black hooks, which slide in a translucent sheath,
+project a little way outside and go in turn by turn.  Are we to
+look upon these as mandibles?  Not at all, for, instead of having
+their points facing each other, as would be required in a real
+mandibular apparatus, the two hooks work in parallel directions and
+never meet.  What they are is ambulatory organs, grapnels assisting
+locomotion, which give a purchase on the plane and enable the
+animal to advance by means of repeated contractions.  The maggot
+walks with the aid of what a superficial examination would
+pronounce to be a machine for eating.  It carries in its gullet the
+equivalent of the climber's alpenstock.
+
+Let us hold it, on a piece of flesh, under the lens.  We shall see
+it walking about, raising and lowering its head and, each time,
+stabbing the meat with its pair of hooks.  When stationary, with
+its crupper at rest, it explores space with a continual bending of
+its fore part; its pointed head pokes about, jabs forward, goes
+back again, producing and withdrawing its black mechanism.  There
+is a perpetual piston play.  Well, look as carefully and
+conscientiously as I please, I do not once see the weapons of the
+mouth tackle a particle of flesh that is torn away and swallowed.
+The hooks come down upon the meat at every moment, but never take a
+visible mouthful from it.  Nevertheless, the grub waxes big and
+fat.  How does this singular consumer, who feeds without eating,
+set about it?  If he does not eat, he must drink; his diet is soup.
+As meat is a compact substance, which does not liquefy of its own
+accord, there must, in that case, be a certain recipe to dissolve
+it into a fluid broth.  Let us try to surprise the maggot's secret.
+
+In a glass tube, sealed at one end, I insert a piece of lean flesh,
+the size of a walnut, which I have drained of its juices by
+squeezing it in blotting paper.  On the top of this, I place a few
+slabs of greenbottle eggs collected a moment ago from the snake in
+my earthen pan.  The number of germs is, roughly, two hundred.  I
+close the tube with a cotton plug, stand it upright, in a shady
+corner of my study, and leave things to take their course.  A
+control tube, prepared like the first, but not stocked with
+maggots, is placed beside it.
+
+As early as two or three days after the hatching, I obtain a
+striking result.  The meat, which was thoroughly drained by the
+blotting paper, has become so moist that the young vermin leave a
+wet mark behind them as they crawl over the glass.  The swarming
+brood creates a sort of mist with the crossing and criss-crossing
+of its trails.  The control tube, on the contrary, keeps dry,
+proving that the moisture in which the worms move is not due to a
+mere exudation from the meat.
+
+Besides, the work of the maggot becomes more and more evident.
+Gradually, the flesh flows in every direction like an icicle placed
+before the fire.  Soon, the liquefaction is complete.  What we see
+is no longer meat, but fluid Liebig's extract.  If I overturned the
+tube, not a drop of it would remain.
+
+Let us clear our minds of any idea of solution by putrefaction, for
+in the second tube a piece of meat of the same kind and size has
+remained, save for color and smell, what it was at the start.  It
+was a lump and it is a lump, whereas the piece treated by the worms
+runs like melted butter.  Here we have maggot chemistry able to
+rouse the envy of physiologists when studying the action of the
+gastric juice.
+
+I obtain better results still with hard-boiled white of egg.  When
+cut into pieces the size of a hazel nut and handed over to the
+greenbottle's grubs, the coagulated albumen dissolves into a
+colorless liquid which the eye might mistake for water.  The
+fluidity becomes so great that, for lack of a support, the worms
+perish by drowning in the broth; they are suffocated by the
+immersion of their hind part, with its open breathing holes.  On a
+denser liquid, they would have kept at the surface; on this, they
+cannot.
+
+A control tube, filled in the same way, but not colonized, stands
+beside that in which the strange liquefaction takes place.  The
+hardboiled white of egg retains its original appearance and
+consistency.  In course of time, it dries up, if it does not turn
+moldy; and that is all.
+
+The other quaternary compounds performing the same functions as
+albumen--the gluten of cereals, the fibrin of blood, the casein of
+cheese and the legumin of chickpeas--undergo a similar
+modification, in varying degrees.  Fed, from the moment of leaving
+the egg, on any one of these substances, the worms thrive very
+well, provided that they escape drowning when the gruel becomes too
+clear; they would not fare better on a corpse.  And, as a general
+rule, there is not much danger of going under: the matter only half
+liquefies; it becomes a running pea soup, rather than an actual
+fluid.
+
+Even in this imperfect case, it is obvious that the greenbottle
+grubs begin by liquefying their food.  Incapable of taking solid
+nourishment, they first transform the spoil into running matter;
+then, dipping their heads into the product, they drink, they slake
+their thirst, with long sups.  Their dissolvent, comparable in its
+effects with the gastric juice of the higher animals, is, beyond a
+doubt, emitted through the mouth.  The piston of the hooks,
+continually in movement, never ceases spitting it out in
+infinitesimal doses.  Each spot touched receives a grain of some
+subtle pepsin, which soon suffices to make that spot run in every
+direction.  As digesting, when all is said, merely means
+liquefying, it is no paradox to assert that the maggot digests its
+food before swallowing it.
+
+These experiments with my filthy, evil smelling tubes have given me
+some delightful moments.  The worthy Abbe Spallanzani must have
+known some such when he saw pieces of raw meat begin to run under
+the action of the gastric juice which he took, with pellets of
+sponge, from the stomachs of crows.  He discovered the secrets of
+digestion; he realized in a glass tube the hitherto unknown labors
+of gastric chemistry.  I, his distant disciple, behold once more,
+under a most unexpected aspect, what struck the Italian scientist
+so forcibly.  Worms take the place of the crows.  They slaver upon
+meat, gluten, albumen; and those substances turn to fluid.  What
+our stomach does within its mysterious recesses the maggot achieves
+outside, in the open air.  It first digests and then imbibes.
+
+When we see it plunging into the carrion broth, we even wonder if
+it cannot feed itself, at least to some extent, in a more direct
+fashion.  Why should not its skin, which is one of the most
+delicate, be capable of absorbing?  I have seen the egg of the
+sacred beetle and other dung beetles growing considerably larger--I
+should like to say, feeding--in the thick atmosphere of the
+hatching chamber.  Nothing tells us that the grub of the
+greenbottle does not adopt this method of growing.  I picture it
+capable of feeding all over the surface of its body.  To the gruel
+absorbed by the mouth it adds the balance of what is gathered and
+strained through the skin.  This would explain the need for
+provisions liquefied beforehand.
+
+Let us give one last proof of this preliminary liquefaction.  If
+the carcass--mole, snake or another--left in the open air have a
+wire gauze cover placed over it, to keep out the flies, the game
+dries under a hot sun and shrivels up without appreciably wetting
+the sand on which it lies.  Fluids come from it, certainly, for
+every organized body is a sponge swollen with water; but the liquid
+discharge is so slow and restricted in quantity that the heat and
+the dryness of the air disperse it as it appears, while the
+underlying sand remains dry, or very nearly so.  The carcass
+becomes a sapless mummy, a mere bit of leather.  On the other hand,
+do not use the wire gauze cover, let the flies do their work
+unimpeded; and things forthwith assume another aspect.  In three or
+four days, an oozing sanies appears under the animal and soaks the
+sand to some distance.
+
+I shall never forget the striking spectacle with which I conclude
+this chapter.  This time, the dish is a magnificent Aesculapius'
+snake, a yard and a half long and as thick as a wide bottleneck.
+Because of its size, which exceeds the dimensions of my pan, I roll
+the reptile in a double spiral, or in two storeys.  When the
+copious joint is in full process of dissolution, the pan becomes a
+puddle wherein wallow, in countless numbers, the grubs of the
+greenbottle and those of Sarcophaga carnaria, the Grey or checkered
+flesh fly, which are even mightier liquefiers.  All the sand in the
+apparatus is saturated, has turned into mud, as though there had
+been a shower of rain.  Through the hole at the bottom, which is
+protected by a flat pebble, the gruel trickles drop by drop.  It is
+a still at work, a mortuary still, in which the Snake is being
+drawn off.  Wait a week or two; and the whole will have
+disappeared, drunk up by the sun: naught but the scales and bones
+will remain on a sheet of mud.
+
+To conclude: the maggot is a power in this world.  To give back to
+life, with all speed, the remains of that which has lived, it
+macerates and condenses corpses, distilling them into an essence
+wherewith the earth, the plant's foster mother, may be nourished
+and enriched.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X  THE GREY FLESH FLIES
+
+Here the costume changes, not the manner of life.  We find the same
+frequenting of dead bodies, the same capacity for the speedy
+liquefaction of the fleshy matter.  I am speaking of an ash-gray
+fly, the greenbottle's superior in size, with brown streaks on her
+back and silver gleams on her abdomen.  Note also the blood-red
+eyes, with the hard look of the knacker in them.  The language of
+science knows her as Sarcophaga, the flesh eater; in the vulgar
+tongue she is the grey flesh fly, or simply the flesh fly.
+
+Let not these expressions, however accurate, mislead us into
+believing for a moment that the Sarcophagae are the bold company of
+master tainters who haunt our dwellings, more particularly in
+autumn, and plant their vermin in our ill-guarded viands.  The
+author of those offences is Calliphora vomitoria, the bluebottle,
+who is of a stouter build and arrayed in darkest blue.  It is she
+who buzzes against our windowpanes, who craftily besieges the meat
+safe and who lies in wait in the darkness for an opportunity to
+outwit our vigilance.  The other, the grey fly, works jointly with
+the greenbottles, who do not venture inside our houses and who work
+in the sunlight.  Less timid, however, than they, should the
+outdoor yield be small, she will sometimes come indoors to
+perpetrate her villainies.  When her business is done, she makes
+off as fast as she can, for she does not feel at home with us.
+
+At this moment, my study, a very modest extension of my open air
+establishments, has become something of a charnel house.  The grey
+fly pays me a visit.  If I lay a piece of butcher's meat on the
+windowsill, she hastens up, works her will on it and retires.  No
+hiding place escapes her notice among the jars, cups, glasses and
+receptacles of every kind with which my shelves are crowded.
+
+With a view to certain experiments, I collected a heap of wasp
+grubs, asphyxiated in their underground nests.  Stealthily she
+arrives, discovers the fat pile and, hailing as treasure trove this
+provender whereof her race perhaps has never made use before,
+entrusts to it an installment of her family.  I have left at the
+bottom of a glass the best part of a hard-boiled egg from which I
+have taken a few bits of white intended for the greenbottle
+maggots.  The grey fly takes possession of the remains, recks not
+of their novelty and colonizes them.  Everything suits her that
+falls within the category of albuminous matters: everything, down
+to dead silkworms; everything, down to a mess of kidney-beans and
+chick-peas.
+
+Nevertheless, her preference is for the corpse: furred beast and
+feathered beast, reptile and fish, indifferently.  Together with
+the greenbottles, she is sedulous in her attendance on my pans.
+Daily she visits my snakes, takes note of the condition of each of
+them, savors them with her proboscis, goes away, comes back, takes
+her time and at last proceeds to business.  Still, it is not here,
+amid the tumult of callers, that I propose to follow her
+operations.  A lump of butcher's meat laid on the window sill, in
+front of my writing table, will be less offensive to the eye and
+will facilitate my observations.
+
+Two flies of the genus Sarcophaga frequent my slaughter yard:
+Sarcophaga carnaria and Sarcophaga haemorrhoidalis, whose abdomen
+ends in a red speck.  The first species, which is a little larger
+than the second, is more numerous and does the best part of the
+work in the open air shambles of the pans.  It is this fly also
+who, at intervals and nearly always alone, hastens to the bait
+exposed on the windowsill.
+
+She comes up suddenly, timidly.  Soon she calms herself and no
+longer thinks of fleeing when I draw near, for the dish suits her.
+She is surprisingly quick about her work.  Twice over--buzz! Buzz!-
+-the tip of her abdomen touches the meat; and the thing is done: a
+group of vermin wriggles out, releases itself and disperses so
+nimbly that I have no time to take my lens and count then
+accurately.  As seen by the naked eye, there were a dozen of them.
+What has become of them?  One would think that they had gone into
+the flesh, at the very spot where they were laid, so quickly have
+they disappeared.  But that dive into a substance of some
+consistency is impossible to these newborn weaklings.  Where are
+they?  I find them more or less everywhere in the creases of the
+meat; singly and already groping with their mouths.  To collect
+them in order to number them is not practicable, for I do not want
+to damage them.  Let us be satisfied with the estimate made at a
+rapid glance: there are a dozen or so, brought into the world in
+one discharge of almost inappreciable length.
+
+Those live grubs, taking the place of the usual eggs, have long
+been known.  Everybody is aware that the flesh flies bring forth
+living maggots, instead of laying eggs.  They have so much to do
+and their work is so urgent! To them, the instruments of the
+transformation of dead matter, a day means a day, a long space of
+time which it is all important to utilize.  The greenbottle's eggs,
+though these are of very rapid development, take twenty-four hours
+to yield their grubs.  The flesh flies save all this time.  From
+their matrix, laborers flow straightway and set to work the moment
+they are born.  With these ardent pioneers of sanitation, there is
+no rest attendant upon the hatching, there is not a minute lost.
+
+The gang, it is true, is not a numerous one; but how often can it
+not be renewed! Read Reaumur's description of the wonderful
+procreating machinery boasted by the Flesh flies.  It is a spiral
+ribbon, a velvety scroll whose nap is a sort of fleece of maggots
+set closely together and each cased in a sheath.  The patient
+biographer counted the host: it numbers, he tells us, nearly twenty
+thousand.  You are seized with stupefaction at this anatomical
+fact.
+
+How does the gray fly find the time to settle a family of such
+dimensions, especially in small packets, as she has just done on my
+window sill?  What a number of dead dogs, moles and snakes must she
+not visit before exhausting her womb! Will she find them?  Corpses
+of much size do not abound to that extent in the country.  As
+everything suits her, she will alight on other remains of minor
+importance.  Should the prize be a rich one, she will return to it
+tomorrow, the day after and later still, over and over again.  In
+the course of the season, by dint of packets of grubs deposited
+here, there and everywhere, she will perhaps end by housing her
+entire brood.  But then, if all things prosper, what a glut, for
+there are several families born during the year! We feel it
+instinctively: there must be a check to these generative
+enormities.
+Let us first consider the grub.  It is a sturdy maggot, easy to
+distinguish from the greenbottle's by its larger girth and
+especially by the way in which its body terminates behind.  There
+is here a sudden breaking off, hollowed into a deep cup.  At the
+bottom of this crater are two breathing holes, two stigmata with
+amber-red tips.  The edge of the cavity is fringed with half a
+score of pointed, fleshy festoons, which diverge like the spikes of
+a coronet.  The creature can close or open this diadem at will by
+bringing the denticulations together or by spreading them out wide.
+This protects the air holes which might otherwise be choked up when
+the maggot disappears in the sea of broth.  Asphyxia would
+supervene, if the two breathing holes at the back became
+obstructed.  During the immersion, the festooned coronet shuts like
+a flower closing its petals and the liquid is not admitted to the
+cavity.
+
+Next follows the emergence.  The hind part reappears in the air,
+but appears alone, just at the level of the fluid.  Then the
+coronet spreads out afresh, the cup gapes and assumes the aspect of
+a tiny flower, with the white denticulations for petals and the two
+bright red dots, the stigmata at the bottom, for stamens.  When the
+grubs, pressed one against the other, with their heads downwards in
+the fetid soup, make an unbroken shoal, the sight of those
+breathing cups incessantly opening and closing, with a little clack
+like a valve, almost makes one forget the horrors of the charnel
+yard.  It suggests a carpet of tiny Sea anemones.  The maggot has
+its beauties after all.
+
+It is obvious, if there be any logic in things, that a grub so
+well-protected against asphyxiation by drowning must frequent
+liquid surroundings.  One does not encircle one's hindquarters with
+a coronet for the sole satisfaction of displaying it.  With its
+apparatus of spokes, the Grey Fly's grub informs us of the
+dangerous nature of its functions: when working upon a corpse, it
+runs the risk of drowning.  How is that?  Remember the grubs of the
+greenbottle, fed on hard-boiled white of egg.  The dish suits them;
+only, by the action of their pepsin, it becomes so fluid that they
+die submerged.  Because of their hinder stigmata, which are
+actually on the skin and devoid of any defensive machinery, they
+perish when they find no support apart from the liquid.
+
+The flesh fly's maggots, though incomparable liquefiers, know
+nothing of this peril, even in a puddle of carrion broth.  Their
+bulky hind part serves as a float and keeps the air holes above the
+surface.  When, for further investigation, they must needs go under
+completely, the anemone at the back shuts and protects the
+stigmata.  The grubs of the gray fly are endowed with a life buoy
+because they are first class liquefiers, ready to incur the danger
+of a ducking at any moment.
+
+When high and dry on the sheet of cardboard where I place them to
+observe them at my ease, they move about actively, with their
+breathing rose widespread and their stigmata rising and falling as
+a support.  The cardboard is on my table, at three steps from an
+open window, and lit at this time of day only by the soft light of
+the sky.  Well, the maggots, one and all of them, turn in the
+opposite direction to the window; they hastily, madly take to
+flight.
+
+I turn the cardboard round, without touching the runaways.  This
+action makes the creatures face the light again.  Forthwith, the
+troop stops, hesitates, takes a half turn and once more retreats
+towards the darkness.  Before the end of the racecourse is reached,
+I again turn the cardboard.  For the second time, the maggots veer
+round and retrace their steps.  Repeat the experiment as often as I
+will, each time the squad wheels about in the opposite direction to
+the window and persists in avoiding the trap of the revolving
+cardboard.
+
+The track is only a short one: the cardboard measures three hand's
+breadths in length.  Let us give more space.  I settle the grubs on
+the floor of the room; with a hair pencil, I turn them with their
+heads pointing towards the lighted aperture.  The moment they are
+free, they turn and run from the light.  With all the speed whereof
+their cripple's shuffle allows, they cover the tiled floor of the
+study and go and knock their heads against the wall, twelve feet
+off, skirting it afterwards, some to the right and some to the
+left.  They never feel far enough away from that hateful
+illuminated opening.
+
+What they are escaping from is evidently the light, for, if I make
+it dark with a screen, the troop does not change its direction when
+I turn the cardboard.  It then progresses quite readily towards the
+window; but, when I remove the screen, it turns tail at once.
+
+That a grub destined to live in the darkness, under the shelter of
+a corpse, should avoid the light is only natural; the strange part
+is its very perception.  The maggot is blind.  Its pointed fore
+part, which we hesitate to call a head, bears absolutely no trace
+of any optical apparatus; and the same with every other part of the
+body.  There is nothing but one bare, smooth, white skin.  And this
+sightless creature, deprived of any special nervous points served
+by ocular power, is extremely sensitive to the light.  Its whole
+skin is a sort of retina, incapable of seeing, of course, but able,
+at any rate, to distinguish between light and darkness.  Under the
+direct rays of a searching sun, the grub's distress could be easily
+explained.  We ourselves; with our coarse skin, in comparison with
+that of the maggot, can distinguish between sunshine and shadow
+without the help of the eyes.  But, in the present case, the
+problem becomes singularly complicated.  The subjects of my
+experiment receive only the diffused light of the sky, entering my
+study through an open window; yet this tempered light frightens
+them out of their senses.  They flee the painful apparition; they
+are bent upon escaping at all costs.
+
+Now what do the fugitives feel?  Are they physically hurt by the
+chemical radiations?  Are they exasperated by other radiations,
+known or unknown?  Light still keeps many a secret hidden from us
+and perhaps our optical science, by studying the maggot, might
+become the richer by some valuable information.  I would gladly
+have gone farther into the question, had I possessed the necessary
+apparatus.  But I have not, I never have had and of course I never
+shall have the resources which are so useful to the seeker.  These
+are reserved for the clever people who care more for lucrative
+posts than for fair truths.  Let us continue, however, within the
+measure which the poverty of my means permits.
+
+When duly fattened, the grubs of the flesh flies go underground to
+transform themselves into pupae.  The burial is intended,
+obviously, to give the worm the tranquillity necessary for the
+metamorphosis.  Let us add that another object of the descent is to
+avoid the importunities of the light.  The maggot isolates itself
+to the best of its power and withdraws from the garish day before
+contracting into a little keg.  In ordinary conditions, with a
+loose soil, it goes hardly lower than a hand's breadth down, for
+provision has to be made for the difficulties of the return to the
+surface when the insect, now full grown, is impeded by its delicate
+fly wings.  The grub, therefore, deems itself suitably isolated at
+a moderate depth.  Sideways, the layer that shields it from the
+light is of indefinite thickness; upwards, it measures about four
+inches.  Behind this screen reigns utter darkness, the buried one's
+delight.  This is capital.
+
+What would happen if, by an artifice, the sideward layer were
+nowhere thick enough to satisfy the grub?  Now, this time, I have
+the wherewithal to solve the problem, in the shape of a big glass
+tube, open at both ends, about three feet long and less than an
+inch wide.  I use it to blow the flame of hydrogen in the little
+chemistry lessons which I give my children.
+
+I close one end with a cork and fill the tube with fine, dry,
+sifted sand.  On the surface of this long column, suspended
+perpendicularly in a corner of my study, I install some twenty
+Sarcophaga grubs, feeding them with meat.  A similar preparation is
+repeated in a wider jar, with a mouth as broad as one's hand.  When
+they are big enough, the grubs in either apparatus will go down to
+the depth that suits them.  There is no more to be done but to
+leave them to their own devices.
+
+The worms at last bury themselves and harden into pupae.  This is
+the moment to consult the two apparatus.  The jar gives me the
+answer which I should have obtained in the open fields.  Four
+inches down, or thereabouts, the worms have found a quiet lodging,
+protected above by the layer through which they have passed and on
+every side by the thickness of the vessel's contents.  Satisfied
+with the site, they have stopped there.
+
+It is a very different matter in the tube.  The least buried of the
+pupae are half a yard down.  Others are lower still; most of them
+even have reached the bottom of the tube and are touching the cork
+stopper, an insuperable barrier.  These last, we can see, would
+have gone yet deeper if the apparatus had allowed them.  Not one of
+the score of grubs has settled at the customary halting place; all
+have traveled farther down the column, until their strength gave
+way.  In their anxious flight, they have dug deeper and ever
+deeper.
+
+What were they flying from?  The light.  Above them, the column
+traversed forms a more than sufficient shelter; but, at the sides,
+the irksome sensation is still felt through a coat of earth half an
+inch thick if the descent is made perpendicularly.  To escape the
+disturbing impression, the grub therefore goes deeper and deeper,
+hoping to obtain lower down the rest which is denied it above.  It
+only ceases to move when worn out with the effort or stopped by an
+obstacle.
+
+Now, in a soft diffused light, what can be the radiations capable
+of acting upon this lover of darkness?  They are certainly not the
+simple luminous rays, for a screen of fine, heaped up earth, nearly
+half an inch in thickness, is perfectly opaque.  Then, to alarm the
+grub, to warn it of the over proximity of the exterior and send it
+to mad depths in search of isolation, other radiations, known or
+unknown, must be required, radiations capable of penetrating a
+screen against which ordinary radiations are powerless.  Who knows
+what vistas the natural philosophy of the maggot might open out to
+us?  For lack of apparatus, I confine myself to suspicions.
+
+To go underground to a yard's depth--and farther if my tube had
+allowed it--is on the part of the Flesh fly's grub a vagary
+provoked by unkind experiment: never would it bury itself so low
+down, if left to its own wisdom.  A hand's breadth thickness is
+quite enough, is even a great deal when, after completing the
+transformation, it has to climb back to the surface, a laborious
+operation absolutely resembling the task of an entombed well
+sinker.  It will have to fight against the sand that slips and
+gradually fills up the small amount of empty space obtained; it
+will perhaps, without crowbar or pickaxe, have to cut itself a
+gallery through something tantamount to tufa, that is to say,
+through earth which a shower has rendered compact.  For the
+descent, the grub has its fangs; for the assent, the fly has
+nothing.  Only that moment come into existence, she is a weakling,
+with tissues still devoid of any firmness.  How does she manage to
+get out?  We shall know by watching a few pupae placed at the
+bottom of a test-tube filled with earth.  The method of the Flesh
+flies will teach us that of the greenbottles and the other Flies,
+all of whom make use of the same means.
+
+Enclosed in her pupa, the nascent fly begins by bursting the lid of
+her casket with a hernia which comes between her two eyes and
+doubles or trebles the size of her head.  This cephalic blister
+throbs: it swells and subsides by turns, owing to the alternate
+flux and reflux of the blood.  It is like the piston of an
+hydraulic press opening and forcing back the front part of the keg.
+
+The head makes its appearance.  The hydrocephalous monster
+continues the play of her forehead, while herself remaining
+stationary.  Inside the pupa, a delicate work is being performed:
+the casting of the white nymphal tunic.  All through this
+operation, the hernia is still projecting.  The head is not the
+head of a fly, but a queer, enormous mitre, spreading at the base
+into two red skull caps, which are the eyes.  To split her cranium
+in the middle, shunt the two halves to the right and left and send
+surging through the gap a tumor which staves the barrel with its
+pressure: this constitutes the Fly's eccentric method.
+
+For what reason does the hernia, once the keg is staved, continue
+swollen and projecting?  I take it to be a waste pocket into which
+the insect momentarily forces back its reserves of blood in order
+to diminish the bulk of the body to that extent and to extract it
+more easily from the nymphal slough and afterwards from the narrow
+channel of the shell.  As long as the operation of the release
+lasts, it pushes outside all that it is able to inject of its
+accumulated humors; it makes itself small inside the pupa and
+swells into a bloated deformity without.  Two hours and more are
+spent in this laborious stripping.
+
+At last, the fly comes into view.  The wings, mere scanty stumps,
+hardly reach the middle of the abdomen.  On the outer edge, they
+have a deep notch similar to the waist of a violin.  This
+diminishes by just so much the surface and the length, an excellent
+device for decreasing the friction along the earthy column which
+has next to be scaled.  The hydrocephalous one resumes her
+performance more vigorously than ever; she inflates and deflates
+her frontal knob.  The pounded sand rustles down the insect's
+sides.  The legs play but a secondary part.  Stretched behind,
+motionless, when the piston stroke is delivered, they furnish a
+support.  As the sand descends, they pile it and nimbly push it
+back, after which they drag along lifelessly until the next
+avalanche.  The head advances each time by a length equal to that
+of the sand displaced.  Each stroke of the frontal swelling means a
+step forward.  In a dry, loose soil, things go pretty fast.  A
+column six inches high is traversed in less than a quarter of an
+hour.
+
+As soon as it reaches the surface, the insect, covered with dust,
+proceeds to make its toilet.  It thrusts out the blister of its
+forehead for the last time and brushes it carefully with its front
+tarsi.  It is important that the little pounding engine should be
+carefully dusted before it is taken inside to form a forehead that
+will open no more: this lest any grit should lodge in the head.
+The wings are carefully brushed and polished; they lose their
+curved notches; they lengthen and spread.  Then, motionless on the
+surface of the sand, the fly matures fully.  Let us set her at
+liberty.  She will go and join the others on the Snakes in my pans.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI  THE BUMBLEBEE FLY
+
+Underneath the wasp's brown paper manor house, the ground is
+channeled into a sort of drain for the refuse of the nest.  Here
+are shot the dead or weakly larvae which a continual inspection
+roots out from the cells to make room for fresh occupants; here, at
+the time of the autumn massacre, are flung the backward grubs;
+here, lastly, lies a good part of the crowd killed by the first
+touch of winter.  During the rack and ruin of November and
+December, this sewer becomes crammed with animal matter.
+
+Such riches will not remain unemployed.  The world's great law
+which says that nothing edible shall be wasted provides for the
+consumption of a mere ball of hair disgorged by the owl.  How shall
+it be with the vast stores of a ruined wasps' nest! If they have
+not come yet, the consumers whose task it is to salve this abundant
+wreckage for nature's markets, they will not tarry in coming and
+waiting for the manna that will soon descend from above.  That
+public granary, lavishly stocked by death, will become a busy
+factory of fresh life.  Who are the guests summoned to the banquet?
+
+If the wasps flew away, carrying the dead or sickly grubs with
+them, and dropped them on the ground round about their home, those
+banqueters would be, first and foremost, the insect-eating birds,
+the warblers, all of whom are lovers of small game.  In this
+connection, we will allow ourselves a brief digression.  We all
+know with what jealous intolerance the nightingales occupy each his
+own cantonment.  Neighborly intercourse among them is tabooed.  The
+males frequently exchange defiant couplets at a distance; but,
+should the challenged party draw near, the challenger makes him
+clear off.  Now, not far from my house, in a scanty clump of holly
+oaks which would barely give the woodcutter the wherewithal for a
+dozen faggots, I used, all through the spring, to hear such full-
+throated warbling of nightingales that the songs of those virtuosi,
+all giving voice at once and with no attempt at order, degenerated
+into a deafening hubbub.
+
+Why did those passionate devotees of solitude come and settle in
+such large numbers at a spot where custom decrees that there is
+just room enough for one household only?  What reasons have made
+the recluse become a congregation?  I asked the owner of the
+spinney about the matter.
+
+'It's like that every year,' he said.  'The clump is overrun by
+Nightingales.'
+
+'And the reason? '
+
+'The reason is that there is a hive close by, behind that wall.'
+
+I looked at the man in amazement, unable to understand what
+connection there could be between a hive and the thronging
+nightingales.
+
+'Why, yes,' he added, 'there are a lot of nightingales because
+there are a lot of bees.
+
+Another questioning look from my side.  I did not yet understand.
+The explanation came: 'The bees,' he said, 'throw out their dead
+grubs.  The front of the hive is strewn with them in the mornings;
+and the nightingales come and collect them for themselves and their
+families.  They are very fond of them.'
+
+This time I had solved the puzzle.  Delicious food, abundant and
+fresh each day, had brought the songsters together.  Contrary to
+their habit, numbers of nightingales are living on friendly terms
+in a cluster of bushes, in order to be near the hive and to have a
+larger share in the morning distribution of plump dainties.
+
+In the same way, the nightingale and his gastronomical rivals would
+haunt the neighborhood of the wasps' nests, if the dead grubs were
+cast out on the surface of the soil; but these delicacies fall
+inside the burrow and no little bird would dare to enter the murky
+cave, even if the entrance were not too small to admit it.  Other
+consumers are needed here, small in size and great in daring; the
+fly is called for and her maggot, the king of the departed.  What
+the greenbottles, the bluebottles and the flesh flies do in the
+open air, at the expense of every kind of corpse, other flies,
+narrowing their province, do underground at the Wasps' expense.
+
+Let us turn our attention, in September, to the wrapper of a wasps'
+nest.  On the outer surface and there alone, this wrapper is strewn
+with a multitude of big, white, elliptical dots, firmly fixed to
+the brown paper and measuring about two millimeters and a half long
+by one and a half wide.  Flat below, convex above and of a lustrous
+white, these dots resemble very neat drops fallen from a tallow
+candle.  Lastly, their backs are streaked with faint transversal
+lines, an elegant detail perceptible only with the lens.  These
+curious objects are scattered all over the surface of the wrapper,
+sometimes at a distance from one another, sometimes gathered into
+more or less dense groups.  They are the eggs of the Volucella, or
+bumblebee fly (Volucella zonaria, LIN.)
+
+Also stuck to the brown paper of the outer wrapper and mixed up
+with the Volucella's are a large number of other eggs, chalk white,
+spear-shaped and ridged lengthwise with seven or eight thin ribs,
+after the manner of the seeds of certain Umbelliferae.  The
+finishing touch to their delicate beauty is the fine stippling all
+over the surface.  They are smaller by half than the others.  I
+have seen grubs come out of them which might easily be the earliest
+stage of some pointed maggots which I have already noticed in the
+burrows.  My attempts to rear them failed; and I am not able to say
+which fly these eggs belong to.  Enough for us to note the nameless
+one in passing.  There are plenty of others, which we must make up
+our minds to leave unlabelled, in view of the jumbled crowd of
+feasters in the ruined wasps' nest.  We will concern ourselves only
+with the most remarkable, in the front rank of which stands the
+bumblebee Fly.
+
+She is a gorgeous and powerful fly; and her costume, with its brown
+and yellow bands, shows a vague resemblance to that of the wasps.
+Our fashionable theorists have availed themselves of this brown and
+yellow to cite the Volucella as a striking instance of protective
+mimicry.  Obliged, if not on her own behalf, at least on that of
+her family, to introduce herself as a parasite into the wasp's
+home, she resorts, they tell us, to trickery and craftily dons her
+victim's livery.  Once inside the wasps' nest, she is taken for one
+of the inhabitants and attends quietly to her business.
+
+The simplicity of the wasp, duped by a very clumsy imitation of her
+garb, and the depravity of the fly, concealing her identity under a
+counterfeit presentment, exceed the limits of my credulity.  The
+wasp is not so silly nor the Volucella so clever as we are assured.
+If the latter really meant to deceive the Wasp by her appearance,
+we must admit that her disguise is none too successful.  Yellow
+sashes round the abdomen do not make a wasp.  It would need more
+than that and, above all, a slender figure and a nimble carriage;
+and the Volucella is thickset and corpulent and sedate in her
+movements.  Never will the wasp take that unwieldy insect for one
+of her own kind.  The difference is too great.
+
+Poor Volucella, mimesis has not taught you enough.  You ought--this
+is the essential point--to have adopted a wasp's shape; and that
+you forgot to do: you remained a fat fly, easily recognizable.
+Nevertheless, you penetrate into the terrible cavern; you are able
+to stay there for a long time, without danger, as the eggs
+profusely strewn on the wrapper of the wasps' nest show.  How do
+you set about it?
+
+Let us, first of all, remember that the bumblebee fly does not
+enter the enclosure in which the combs are heaped: she keeps to the
+outer surface of the paper rampart and there lays her eggs.  Let
+us, on the other hand, recall the Polistes [a tree nesting wasp]
+placed in the company of the wasps in my vivarium.  Here of a
+surety is one who need not have recourse to mimicry to find
+acceptance.  She belongs to the guild, she is a wasp herself.  Any
+of us that had not the trained eye of the entomologist would
+confuse the two species.  Well, this stranger, as long as she does
+not become too importunate, is quite readily tolerated by the caged
+wasps.  None seeks to pick a quarrel with her.  She is even
+admitted to the table, the strip of paper smeared with honey.  But
+she is doomed if she inadvertently sets foot upon the combs.  Her
+costume, her shape, her size, which tally almost exactly with the
+costume, shape and size of the wasp, do not save her from her fate.
+She is at once recognized as a stranger and attacked and
+slaughtered with the same vigor as the larvae of the Hylotoma
+sawfly and the Saperda beetle, neither of which bears any outward
+resemblance to the larva of the wasps.
+
+Seeing that identity of shape and costume does not save the
+Polistes, how will the Volucella fare, with her clumsy imitation?
+The wasp's eye, which is able to discern the dissimilar in the
+like, will refuse to be caught.  The moment she is recognized, the
+stranger is killed on the spot.  As to that there is not the shadow
+of a doubt.
+
+In the absence of bumblebee flies at the moment of experimenting, I
+employ another fly, Milesia fulminans, who, thanks to her slim
+figure and her handsome yellow bands, presents a much more striking
+likeness to the wasp than does the fat Volucella zonaria.  Despite
+this resemblance, if she rashly venture on the combs, she is
+stabbed and slain.  Her yellow sashes, her slender abdomen deceive
+nobody.  The stranger is recognized behind the features of a
+double.
+
+My experiments under glass, which varied according to the captures
+which I happened to make, all lead me to this conclusion: as long
+as there is more propinquity, even around the honey, the other
+occupants are tolerated fairly well; but, if they touch the cells,
+they are assaulted and often killed, without distinction of shape
+or costume.  The grubs' dormitory is the sanctum sanctorum which no
+outsider must enter under pain of death.
+
+With these caged captives I experiment by daylight, whereas the
+free wasps work in the absolute darkness of their underground
+retreat.  Where light is absent, color goes for nothing.  Once,
+therefore, that she has entered the cavern, the bumblebee fly
+derives no benefit from her yellow bands, which are supposed to be
+her safeguard.  Whether garbed as she is or otherwise, it is easy
+for her to effect her purpose in the dark, on condition that she
+avoids the tumultuous interior of the wasps' nest.  So long as she
+has the prudence not to hustle the passers by, she can dab her
+eggs, without danger, on the paper wall.  No one will know of her
+presence.  The dangerous thing is to cross the threshold of the
+burrow in broad daylight, before the eyes of those who go in and
+out.  At that moment alone, protective mimicry would be convenient.
+Now does the entrance of the Volucella into the presence of a few
+wasps entail such very great risks?  The wasps' nest in my
+enclosure, the one which was afterwards to perish in the sun under
+a bell glass, gave me the opportunity for prolonged observations,
+but without any result upon the subject of my immediate concern.
+The bumblebee fly did not appear.  The period for her visits had
+doubtless passed; for I found plenty of her grubs when the nest was
+dug up.
+
+Other flies rewarded me for my assiduity.  I saw some--at a
+respectful distance, I need hardly say--entering the burrow.  They
+were insignificant in size and of a dark gray color, not unlike
+that of the housefly.  They had not a patch of yellow about them
+and certainly had no claim to protective mimicry.  Nevertheless,
+they went in and out as they pleased, calmly, as though they were
+at home.  As long as there was not too great a number at the door,
+the wasps left them alone.  When there was anything of a crowd, the
+gray visitors waited near the threshold for a less busy moment.  No
+harm came to them.
+
+Inside the establishment, the same peaceful relations prevail.  In
+this respect I have the evidence of my excavations.  In the
+underground charnel house, so rich in Fly grubs, I find no corpses
+of adult flies.  If the strangers had been slaughtered in passing
+through the entrance hall, or lower down, they would fall to the
+bottom of the burrow anyhow, with the other rubbish.  Now in this
+charnel house, as I said, there are never any dead bumblebee flies,
+never a fly of any sort.  The incomers are respected.  Having done
+their business, they go out unscathed.
+
+This tolerance on the part of the wasps is surprising.  And a
+suspicion comes to one's mind: can it be that the Volucella and the
+rest are not what the accepted theories of natural history call
+them, namely, enemies, grub killers sacking the wasps' nest?  We
+will look into this by examining them when they are hatched.
+Nothing is easier, in September and October, than to collect the
+Volucella's eggs in such numbers as we please.  They abound on the
+outer surface of the wasps' nest.  Moreover, as with the larvae of
+the wasp, it is some time before they are suffocated by the
+petroleum fumes; and so most of them are sure to hatch.  I take my
+scissors, cut the most densely populated bits from the paper wall
+of the nest and fill a jar with them.  This is the warehouse from
+which I shall daily, for the best part of the next two months, draw
+my supply of nascent grubs.
+
+The Volucella's egg remains where it is, with its white color
+always strongly marked against the brown of the background.  The
+shell wrinkles and collapses; and the fore end tears open.  From it
+there issues a pretty little white grub, thin in front, swelling
+slightly in the rear and bristling all over with fleshy
+protuberances.  The creature's papillae are set on its sides like
+the teeth of a comb; at the rear, they lengthen and spread into a
+fan; on the back, they are shorter and arranged in four
+longitudinal rows.  The last section but one carries two short,
+bright red breathing tubes, standing aslant and joined to each
+other.  The fore part, near the pointed mouth, is of a darker,
+brownish color.  This is the biting  and motor apparatus, seen
+through the skin and consisting of two fangs.  Taken all round, the
+grub is a pretty little thing, with its bristling whiteness, which
+gives it the appearance of a tiny snowflake.  But this elegance
+does not last long: grown big and strong, the bumblebee fly's grub
+becomes soiled with sanies, turns a russety brown and crawls about
+in the guise of a hulking porcupine.
+
+What becomes of it when it leaves the egg?  This my warehousing jar
+tells me, partly.  Unable to keep its balance on sloping surfaces,
+it drops to the bottom of the receptacle, where I find it, daily,
+as hatched, wandering restlessly.  Things must happen likewise at
+the wasps'.  Incapable of standing on the slant of the paper wall,
+the newborn grubs slide to the bottom of the underground cavity,
+which contains, especially at the end of the summer, a heaped up
+provender of deceased wasps and dead larvae removed from the cells
+and flung outside the house, all nice and gamy, as proper maggot's
+food should be.
+The Volucella's offspring, themselves maggots, notwithstanding
+their snowy apparel, find in this charnel house victuals to their
+liking, incessantly renewed.  Their fall from the high walls might
+well be not accidental, but rather a means of reaching, quickly and
+without searching, the good things down at the bottom of the
+cavern.  Perhaps, also, some of the white grubs, thanks to the
+holes that make the wrapper resemble a spongy cover, manage to slip
+inside the Wasps' nest.  Still, most of the Volucella's grubs, at
+whatever stage of their development, are in the basement of the
+burrow, among the carrion remains.  The others, those settled in
+the wasps' home itself, are comparatively few.
+
+These returns are enough to show us that the grubs of the bumblebee
+fly do not deserve the bad reputation that has been given them.
+Satisfied with the spoils of the dead, they do not touch the
+living; they do not ravage the wasps' nest: they disinfect it.
+
+Experiment confirms what we have learnt in the actual nests.  Over
+and over again, I bring wasp grubs and Volucella grubs together in
+small test tubes, which are easy to observe.  The first are well
+and strong; I have just taken them from their cells.  The others
+are in various stages, from that of the snowflake born the same day
+to that of the sturdy porcupine.  There is nothing tragic about the
+encounter.  The grubs of the bumblebee fly roam about the test-tube
+without touching the live tidbit.  The most that they do is to put
+their mouths for a moment to the morsel; then they take it away
+again, not caring for the dish.
+
+They want something different: a wounded, a dying grub; a corpse
+dissolving into sanies.  Indeed, if I prick the wasp grub with a
+needle, the scornful ones at once come and sup at the bleeding
+wound.  If I give them a dead grub, brown with putrefaction, the
+worms rip it open and feast on its humors.  Better still: I can
+feed them quite satisfactorily with wasps that have turned putrid
+under their horny rings; I see them greedily suck the juices of
+decomposing Rosechafer grubs; I can keep them thriving with chopped
+up butcher's meat, which they know how to liquefy by the method of
+the common maggot.  And these unprejudiced ones, who accept
+anything that comes their way, provided it be dead, refuse it when
+it is alive.  Like the true flies that they are, frank body
+snatchers, they wait, before touching a morsel, for death to do its
+work.
+
+Inside the wasps' nest, robust grubs are the rule and weaklings the
+rare exception, because of the assiduous supervision which
+eliminates anything that is diseased and like to die.  Here,
+nevertheless, Volucella grubs are found, on the combs, among the
+busy wasps.  They are not, it is true, so numerous as in the
+charnel house below, but still pretty frequent.  Now what do they
+do in this abode where there are no corpses?  Do they attack the
+healthy?  Their continual visits from cell to cell would at first
+make one think so; but we shall soon be undeceived if we observe
+their movements closely; and this is possible with my glass roofed
+colonies.
+
+I see them fussily crawling on the surface of the combs, curving
+their necks from side to side and taking stock of the cells.  This
+one does not suit, nor that one either; the bristly creature passes
+on, still in search, thrusting its pointed fore part now here, now
+there.  This time, the cell appears to fulfil the requisite
+conditions.  A larva, glowing with health, opens wide its mouth,
+believing its nurse to be approaching.  It fills the hexagonal
+chamber with its bulging sides.
+
+The gluttonous visitor bends and slides its slender fore part, a
+blade of exquisite suppleness, between the wall and the inhabitant,
+whose slack rotundity yields to the pressure of this animated
+wedge.  It plunges into the cell, leaving no part of itself outside
+but its wide hind quarters, with the red dots of the two breathing
+tubes.
+
+It remains in this posture for some time, occupied with its work at
+the bottom of the cell.  Meanwhile, the wasps present do not
+interfere, remain impassive, showing that the grub visited is in no
+peril.  The stranger, in fact, withdraws with a soft, gliding
+motion.  The chubby babe, a sort of India rubber bag, resumes its
+original volume without having suffered any harm, as its appetite
+proves.  A nurse offers it a mouthful, which it accepts with every
+sign of unimpaired vigor.  As for the Volucella grub, it licks its
+lips after its own fashion, pushing its two fangs in and out; then,
+without further loss of time, goes and repeats its probing
+elsewhere.
+
+What it wants down there, at the bottom of the cells, behind the
+grubs, cannot be decided by direct observation; it must be guessed
+at.  Since the visited larva remains intact, it is not prey that
+the Volucella grub is after.  Besides, if murder formed part of its
+plans, why descend to the bottom of the cell, instead of attacking
+the defenseless recluse straight way?  It would be much easier to
+suck the patient's juices through the actual orifice of the cell.
+Instead of that, we see a dip, always a dip and never any other
+tactics.
+
+Then what is there behind the wasp grub?  Let us try to put it as
+decently as possible.  In spite of its exceeding cleanliness, this
+grub is not exempt from the physiological ills inseparable from the
+stomach.  Like all that eats, it has intestinal waste matter with
+regard to which its confinement compels it to behave with extreme
+discretion.  Like so many other close-cabined larvae of Wasps and
+Bees, it waits until the moment of the transformation to rid itself
+of its digestive refuse.  Then, once and for all, it casts out the
+unclean accumulation whereof the pupa, that delicate, reborn
+organism, must not retain the least trace.  This is found later, in
+any empty cell, in the form of a dark purple plug.  But, without
+waiting for this final purge, this lump, there are, from time to
+time, slight excretions of fluid, clear as water.  We have only to
+keep a Wasp grub in a little glass tube to recognize these
+occasional discharges.  Well, I see nothing else to explain the
+action of the Volucella's grubs when they dip into the cells
+without wounding the larvae.  They are looking for this liquid,
+they provoke its emission.  It represents to them a dainty which
+they enjoy over and above the more substantial fare provided by the
+corpses.
+
+The bumblebee fly, that sanitary inspector of the Vespine city,
+fulfils a double office: she wipes the wasp's children and she rids
+the nest of its dead.  For this reason, she is peacefully received,
+as an auxiliary, when she enters the burrow to lay her eggs; for
+this reason, her grub is tolerated, nay more, respected, in the
+very heart of the dwelling, where none might stray with impunity.
+I remember the brutal reception given to the Saperda and Hylotoma
+grubs when I place them on a comb.  Forthwith grabbed, bruised and
+riddled with stings, the poor wretches perish.  It is quite a
+different matter with the offspring of the Volucella.  They come
+and go as they please, poke about in the cells, elbow the
+inhabitants and remain unmolested.  Let us give some instances of
+this clemency, which is very strange in the irascible Wasp.
+
+For a couple of hours, I fix my attention on a Volucella grub
+established in a cell, side by side with the Wasp grub, the
+mistress of the house.  The hind quarters emerge, displaying their
+papillae.  Sometimes also the fore part, the head, shows, bending
+from side to side with sudden, snake-like motions.  The wasps have
+just filled their crops at the honey pot; they are dispensing the
+rations, are very busily at work; and things are taking place in
+broad daylight, on the table by the window.
+
+As they pass from cell to cell, the nurses repeatedly brush against
+and stride across the Volucella grub.  There is no doubt that they
+see it.  The intruder does not budge, or, if trodden on, curls up,
+only to reappear the next moment.  Some of the wasps stop, bend
+their heads over the opening, seem to be making inquiries and then
+go off, without troubling further about the state of things.  One
+of them does something even more remarkable: she tries to give a
+mouthful to the lawful occupant of the cell; but the larva, which
+is being squeezed by its visitor, has no appetite and refuses.
+Without the least sign of anxiety on behalf of the nursling which
+she sees in awkward company, the wasp retires and goes to
+distribute its ration elsewhere.  In vain I prolong my examination:
+there is no fluster of any kind.  The Volucella grub is treated as
+a friend, or at least as a visitor that does not matter.  There is
+no attempt to dislodge it, to worry it, to put it to flight.  Nor
+does the grub seem to trouble greatly about those who come and go.
+Its tranquillity, tells us that it feels at home.
+
+Here is some further evidence: the grub has plunged, head
+downwards, into an empty cell, which is too small to contain the
+whole of it.  Its hindquarters stick out, very visibly.  For long
+hours, it remains motionless in this position.  At every moment,
+wasps pass and repass close by.  Three of them, at one time
+together, at another separately, come and nibble at the edges of
+the cell; they break off particles which they reduce to paste for a
+new piece of work.  The passers by, intent upon their business, may
+not perceive the intruder; but these three certainly do.  During
+their work of demolition, they touch the grub with their legs,
+their antennae, their palpi; and yet none of them minds it.  The
+fat grub, so easily recognized by its queer figure, is left alone;
+and this in broad daylight, where everybody can see it.  What must
+it be when the profound darkness of the burrows protects the
+visitor with its mysteries!
+
+I have been experimenting all along with big Volucella grubs,
+colored with the dirty red which comes with age.  What effect will
+pure white produce?  I sprinkle on the surface of the combs some
+larvae that have lately left the egg.  The tiny, snow-white grubs
+make for the nearest cells, go down into them, come out again and
+hunt elsewhere.  The wasps peaceably let them go their way, as
+heedless of the little white invaders as of the big red ones.
+Sometimes, when it enters an occupied cell, the little creature is
+seized by the owner, the wasp grub, which nabs it and turns and
+returns it between its mandibles.  Is this a defensive bite?  No,
+the wasp grub has merely blundered, taking its visitor for a
+proffered mouthful.  There is no great harm done.  Thanks to its
+suppleness, the little grub emerges from the grip intact and
+continues its investigations.
+
+It might occur to us to attribute this tolerance to some lack of
+penetration in the wasps' vision.  What follows will undeceive us:
+I place separately, in empty cells, a grub of Saperda scalaria and
+a Volucella grub, both of them white and selected so as not to fill
+the cell entirely.  Their presence is revealed only by the paleness
+of the hind part which serves as a plug to the opening.  A
+superficial examination would leave the nature of the recluse
+undecided.  The wasps make no mistake: they extirpate the Saperda
+grub, kill it, fling it on the dust heap; they leave the Volucella
+grub in peace.
+
+The two strangers are quite well recognized in the secrecy of the
+cells: one is the intruder that must be turned out; the other is
+the regular visitor that must be respected.  Sight helps, for
+things take place in the daylight, under glass; but the wasps have
+other means of information in the dimness of the burrow.  When I
+produce darkness by covering the apparatus with a screen, the
+murder of the trespassers is accomplished just the same.  For so
+say the police regulations of the wasps' nest: any stranger
+discovered must be slain and thrown on the midden.
+
+To thwart this vigilance, the real enemies need to be masters of
+the art of deceptive immobility and cunning disguise.  But there is
+no deception about the Volucella grub.  It comes and goes, openly,
+wheresoever it will; it looks round amongst the wasps for cells to
+suit it.  What has it to make itself thus respected?  Strength?
+Certainly not.  It is a harmless creature, which the wasp could rip
+open with a blow of her shears, while a touch of the sting would
+mean lightning death.  It is a familiar guest, to whom no denizen
+of a wasps' nest bears any ill will.  Why?  Because it renders good
+service: so far from working mischief, it does the scavenging for
+its hosts.  Were it an enemy or merely an intruder, it would be
+exterminated; as a deserving assistant, it is respected.
+
+Then what need is there for the Volucella to disguise herself as a
+wasp?  Any fly, whether clad in drab or motley, is admitted to the
+burrow directly she makes herself useful to the community.  The
+mimicry of the bumblebee fly, which was said to be one of the most
+conclusive cases, is, after all, a mere childish notion.  Patient
+observation, continually face to face with facts, will have none of
+it and leaves it to the armchair naturalists, who are too prone to
+look at the animal world through the illusive mists of theory,
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII  MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: NEWTON'S BINOMIAL THEOREM
+
+The spider's web is a glorious mathematical problem.  I should
+enjoy working it out in all its details, were I not afraid of
+wearying the reader's attention.  Perhaps I have even gone too far
+in the little that I have said, in which case I owe him some
+compensation: 'Would you like me,' I will ask him, 'would you like
+me to tell you how I acquired sufficient algebra to master the
+logarithmic systems and how I became a surveyor of Spiders' webs?
+Would you?  It will give us a rest from natural history.'
+
+I seem to catch a sign of acquiescence.  The story of my village
+school, visited by the chicks and the porkers, has been received
+with some indulgence; why should not my harsh school of solitude
+possess its interest as well?  Let us try to describe it.  And who
+knows?  Perhaps, in doing so, I shall revive the courage of some
+other poor derelict hungering after knowledge.
+
+I was denied the privilege of learning with a master.  I should be
+wrong to complain.  Solitary study has its advantages: it does not
+cast you in the official mould; it leaves you all your originality.
+Wild fruit, when it ripens, has a different taste from hothouse
+produce: it leaves on a discriminating palate a bittersweet flavor
+whose virtue is all the greater for the contrast.  Yes, if it were
+in my power, I would start afresh, face to face with my only
+counselor, the book itself, not always a very lucid one; I would
+gladly resume my lonely watches, my struggles with the darkness
+whence, at last, a glimmer appears as I continue to explore it; I
+should retraverse the irksome stages of yore, stimulated by the one
+desire that has never failed me, the desire of learning and of
+afterwards bestowing my mite of knowledge on others.
+
+When I left the normal school, my stock of mathematics was of the
+scantiest.  How to extract a square root, how to calculate and
+prove the surface of a sphere: these represented to me the
+culminating points of the subject.  Those terrible logarithms, when
+I happened to open a table of them, made my head swim, with their
+columns of figures; actual fright, not unmixed with respect,
+overwhelmed me on the very threshold of that arithmetical cave.  Of
+algebra I had no knowledge whatever.  I had heard the name; and the
+syllables represented to my poor brain the whole whirling legion of
+the abstruse.
+
+Besides, I felt no inclination to decipher the alarming
+hieroglyphics.  They made one of those indigestible dishes which we
+confidently extol without touching them.  I greatly preferred a
+fine line of Virgil, whom I was now beginning to understand; and I
+should have been surprised indeed had any one told me that, for
+long years to come, I should be an enthusiastic student of the
+formidable science.  Good fortune procured me my first lesson in
+algebra, a lesson given and not received, of course.
+
+A young man of about my own age came to me and asked me to teach
+him algebra.  He was preparing for his examination as a civil
+engineer; and he came to me because, ingenuous youth that he was,
+he took me for a well of learning.  The guileless applicant was
+very far out in his reckoning.
+
+His request gave me a shock of surprise, which was forthwith
+repressed on reflection: 'I give algebra lessons? ' said I to
+myself.  'It would be madness: I don't know anything about the
+subject!'
+
+And I left it at that for a moment or two, thinking hard, drawn now
+this way, now that with indecision: 'Shall I accept?  Shall I
+refuse? ' continued the inner voice.
+
+Pooh, let's accept! An heroic method of learning to swim is to leap
+boldly into the sea.  Let us hurl ourselves head first into the
+algebraical gulf; and perhaps the imminent danger of drowning will
+call forth efforts capable of bringing me to land.  I know nothing
+of what he wants.  It makes no difference: let's go ahead and
+plunge into the mystery.  I shall learn by teaching.
+
+It was a fine courage that drove me full tilt into a province which
+I had not yet thought of entering.  My twenty-year-old confidence
+was an incomparable lever.
+
+'Very well,' I replied.  'Come the day after tomorrow, at five, and
+we'll begin.'
+
+This twenty-four hours' delay concealed a plan.  It secured me the
+respite of a day, the blessed Thursday, which would give me time to
+collect my forces.
+
+Thursday comes.  The sky is gray and cold.  In this horrid weather,
+a grate well filled with coke has its charms.  Let's warm ourselves
+and think.
+
+Well, my boy, you've landed yourself in a nice predicament! How
+will you manage tomorrow?  With a book, plodding all through the
+night, if necessary, you might scrape up something resembling a
+lesson, just enough to fill the dread hour more or less.  Then you
+could see about the next: sufficient for the day is the evil
+thereof.  But you haven't the book.  And it's no use running out to
+the bookshop.  Algebraical treatises are not current wares.  You'll
+have to send for one, which will take a fortnight at least.  And
+I've promised for tomorrow, for tomorrow certain! Another argument
+and one that admits of no reply: funds are low; my last pecuniary
+resources lie in the corner of a drawer.  I count the money: it
+amounts to twelve sous, which is not enough.
+
+Must I cry off?  Rather not! One resource suggests itself: a highly
+improper one, I admit, not far removed indeed from larceny.  O
+quiet paths of algebra, you are my excuse for this venial sin! Let
+me confess the temporary embezzlement.
+
+Life at my college is more or less cloistered.  In return for a
+modest payment, most of us masters are lodged in the building; and
+we take our meals at the principal's table.  The science master,
+who is the big gun of the staff and lives in the town, has
+nevertheless, like ourselves, his own two cells, in addition to a
+balcony, or leads, where the chemical preparations give forth their
+suffocating gases in the open air.  For this reason, he finds it
+more convenient to hold his class here during the greater part of
+the year.  The boys come to these rooms in winter, in front of a
+grate stuffed full of coke, like mine, and there find a blackboard,
+a pneumatic trough, a mantelpiece covered with glass receivers,
+panoplies of bent tubes on the walls, and, lastly, a certain
+cupboard in which I remember seeing a row of books, the oracles
+consulted by the master in the course of his lessons.
+
+'Among those books,' said I to myself, 'there is sure to be one on
+algebra.  To ask the owner for the loan of it does not appeal to
+me.  My amiable colleague would receive me superciliously and laugh
+at my ambitious aims.  I am sure he would refuse my request.'
+
+The future was to show that my distrust was justified.  Narrow
+mindedness and petty jealousy prevail everywhere alike.
+
+I decide to help myself to this book, which I should never get by
+asking.  This is the half-holiday.  The science master will not put
+in an appearance today; and the key of my room is practically the
+same as his.  I go, with eyes and ears on the alert.  My key does
+not quite fit; it sticks a little, then goes in; and an extra
+effort makes it turn in the lock.  The door opens.  I inspect the
+cupboard and find that it does contain an algebra book, one of the
+big, fat books which men used to write in those days, a book nearly
+half a foot thick.  My legs give way beneath me.  You poor specimen
+of a housebreaker, suppose you were caught at it! However, all goes
+well.  Quick, let's lock the door again and go back to our own
+quarters with the pilfered volume.
+
+And now we are together, O mysterious tome, whose Arab name
+breathes a strange mustiness of occult lore and claims kindred with
+the sciences of almagest and alchemy.  What will you show me?  Let
+us turn the leaves at random.  Before fixing one's eyes on a
+definite point in the landscape, it is well to take a summary view
+of the whole.  Page follows swiftly upon page, telling me nothing.
+A chapter catches my attention in the middle of the volume; it is
+headed, Newton's Binomial Theorem.
+
+The title allures me.  What can a binomial theorem be, especially
+one whose author is Newton, the great English mathematician who
+weighed the worlds?  What has the mechanism of the sky to do with
+this?  Let us read and seek for enlightenment.  With my elbows on
+the table and my thumbs behind my ears, I concentrate all my
+attention.
+
+I am seized with astonishment, for I understand! There are a
+certain number of letters, general symbols which are grouped in all
+manner of ways, taking their places here, there and elsewhere by
+turns; there are, as the text tells me, arrangements, permutations
+and combinations.  Pen in hand, I arrange, permute and combine.  It
+is a very diverting exercise, upon my word, a game in which the
+test of the written result confirms the anticipations of logic and
+supplements the shortcomings of one's thinking apparatus.
+
+'It will be plain sailing,' said I to myself, 'if algebra is no
+more difficult than this.'
+
+I was to recover from the illusion later, when the binomial
+theorem, that light, crisp biscuit, was followed by heavier and
+less digestible fare.  But, for the moment, I had no foretaste of
+the future difficulties, of the pitfall in which one becomes more
+and more entangled, the longer one persists in struggling.  What a
+delightful afternoon that was, before my grate, amid my
+permutations and combinations! By the evening, I had nearly
+mastered my subject.  When the bell rang, at seven, to summon us to
+the common meal at the principal's table, I went downstairs puffed
+up with the joys of the newly initiated neophyte.  I was escorted
+on my way by a, b and c, intertwined in cunning garlands.
+
+Next day, my pupil is there.  Blackboard and chalk, everything is
+ready.  Not quite so ready is the master.  I bravely broach my
+binomial theorem.  My hearer becomes interested in the combinations
+of letters.  Not for a moment does he suspect that I am putting the
+cart before the horse and beginning where we ought to have
+finished.  I relieve the dryness of my explanations with a few
+little problems, so many halts at which the mind takes breath
+awhile and gathers strength for fresh flights.
+
+We try together.  Discreetly, so as to leave him the merit of the
+discovery, I shed a little light on the path.  The solution is
+found.  My pupil triumphs; so do I, but silently, in my inner
+consciousness, which says:
+
+'You understand, because you succeed in making another understand.'
+
+The hour passed quickly and very pleasantly for both of us.  My
+young man was contented when he left me; and I no less so, for I
+perceived a new and original way of learning things.
+
+The ingenious and easy arrangement of the binomial gave me time to
+tackle my algebra book from the proper commencement.  In three or
+four days, I had rubbed up my weapons.  There was nothing to be
+said about addition and subtraction: they were so simple as to
+force themselves upon one at first sight.  Multiplication spoilt
+things.  There was a certain rule of signs which declared that
+minus multiplied by minus made plus.  How I toiled over that
+wretched paradox! It would seem that the book did not explain this
+subject clearly, or rather employed too abstract a method.  I read,
+reread and meditated in vain: the obscure text retained all its
+obscurity.  That is the drawback of books in general: they tell you
+what is printed in them and nothing more.  If you fail to
+understand, they never advise you, never suggest an attempt along
+another road which might lead you to the light.  The merest word
+would sometimes be enough to put you on the right track; and that
+word the books, hidebound in a regulation phraseology, never give
+you.
+
+How greatly preferable is the oral lesson! It goes forward, goes
+back, starts afresh, walks around the obstacle and varies the
+methods of attack until, at long last, light is shed upon the
+darkness.  This incomparable beacon of the master's word was what I
+lacked; and I went under, without hope of succor, in that
+treacherous pool of the rule of signs.
+
+My pupil was bound to suffer the effects.  After an attempt at an
+explanation in which I made the most of the few gleams that reached
+me I asked him:
+
+'Do you understand? '
+
+It was a futile question, but useful for gaining time.  Myself not
+understanding, I was convinced beforehand that he did not
+understand either.
+
+'No,' he replied, accusing himself, perhaps, in his simple mind, of
+possessing a brain incapable of taking in those transcendental
+verities.
+
+'Let us try another method.'
+
+And I start again this way and that way and yet another way.  My
+pupil's eyes serve as my thermometer and tell me of the progress of
+my efforts.  A blink of satisfaction announces my success.  I have
+struck home, I have found the joint in the armor.  The product of
+minus multiplied by minus delivers its mysteries to us.
+
+And thus we continued our studies: he, the passive receiver, taking
+in the ideas acquired without effort; I, the fierce pioneer,
+blasting my rock, the book, with the aid of much sitting up at
+night, to extract the diamond, truth.  Another and no less arduous
+task fell to my share: I had to cut and polish the recondite gem,
+to strip it of its ruggedness and present it to my companion's
+intelligence under a less forbidding aspect.  This diamond cutter's
+work, which admitted a little light into the precious stone, was
+the favorite occupation of my leisure; and I owe a great deal to
+it.
+
+The ultimate result was that my pupil passed his examination.  As
+for the book borrowed by stealth, I restored it to the shelves and
+replaced it by another, which, this time, belonged to me.
+
+At my normal school, I had learnt a little elementary geometry
+under a master.  From the first few lessons onwards, I rather
+enjoyed the subject.  I divined in it a guide for one's reasoning
+faculties through the thickets of the imagination; I caught a
+glimpse of a search after truth that did not involve too much
+stumbling on the way, because each step forward rests solidly upon
+the step already taken; I suspected geometry to be what it
+preeminently is: a school of intellectual fencing.
+
+The truth demonstrated and its application matter little to me;
+what rouses my enthusiasm is the process that sets the truth before
+us.  We start from a brilliantly lighted spot and gradually get
+deeper and deeper in the darkness, which, in its turn, becomes
+self-illuminated by kindling new lights for a higher ascent.  This
+progressive march of the known toward the unknown, this
+conscientious lantern lighting what follows by the rays of what
+comes before: that was my real business.
+
+Geometry was to teach me the logical progression of thought; it was
+to tell me how the difficulties are broken up into sections which,
+elucidated consecutively, together form a lever capable of moving
+the block that resists any direct efforts; lastly, it showed me how
+order is engendered, order, the base of clarity.  If it has ever
+fallen to my lot to write a page or two which the reader has run
+over without excessive fatigue, I owe it, in great part, to
+geometry, that wonderful teacher of the art of directing one's
+thought.  True, it does not bestow imagination, a delicate flower
+blossoming none knows how and unable to thrive on every soil; but
+it arranges what is confused, thins out the dense, calms the
+tumultuous, filters the muddy and gives lucidity, a superior
+product to all the tropes of rhetoric.
+
+Yes, as a toiler with the pen, I owe much to it.  Wherefore my
+thoughts readily turn back to those bright hours of my novitiate,
+when, retiring to a corner of the garden in recreation time, with a
+bit of paper on my knees and a stump of pencil in my fingers, I
+used to practice deducing this or that property correctly from an
+assemblage of straight lines.  The others amused themselves all
+around me; I found my delight in the frustum of a pyramid.  Perhaps
+I should have done better to strengthen the muscles of my thighs by
+jumping and leaping, to increase the suppleness of my loins with
+gymnastic contortions.  I have known some contortionists who have
+prospered beyond the thinker.
+
+See me then entering the lists as an instructor of youth, fairly
+well acquainted with the elements of geometry.  In case of need, I
+could handle the land surveyor's stake and chain.  There my views
+ended.  To cube the trunk of a tree, to gauge a cask, to measure
+the distance of an inaccessible point appeared to me the highest
+pitch to which geometrical knowledge could hope to soar.  Were
+there loftier flights?  I did not even suspect it, when an
+unexpected glimpse showed me the puny dimensions of the little
+corner which I had cleared in the measureless domain.
+
+At that time, the college in which, two years before, I had made my
+first appearance as a teacher, had just halved the size of its
+classes and largely increased its staff.  The newcomers all lived
+in the building, like myself, and we had our meals in common at the
+principal's table.  We formed a hive where, in our leisure time,
+some of us, in our respective cells, worked up the honey of algebra
+and geometry, history and physics, Greek and Latin most of all,
+sometimes with a view to the class above, sometimes and oftener
+with a view to acquiring a degree.  The university titles lacked
+variety.  All my colleagues were bachelors of letters, but nothing
+more.  They must, if possible, arm themselves a little better to
+make their way in the world.  We all worked hard and steadily.  I
+was the youngest of the industrious community and no less eager
+than the rest to increase my modest equipment.
+
+Visits between the different rooms were frequent.  We would come to
+consult one another about a difficulty, or simply to pass the time
+of day.  I had as a neighbor, in the next cell to mine, a retired
+quartermaster who, weary of barrack life, had taken refuge in
+education.  When in charge of the books of his company he had
+become more or less familiar with figures; and it became his
+ambition to take a mathematical degree.  His cerebrum appears to
+have hardened while he was with his regiment.  According to my dear
+colleagues, those amiable retailers of the misfortunes of others,
+he had already twice been plucked.  Stubbornly, he returned to his
+books and exercises, refusing to be daunted by two reverses.
+
+It was not that he was allured by the beauties of mathematics, far
+from it; but the step to which he aspired favored his plans.  He
+hoped to have his own boarders and dispense butter and vegetables
+to lucrative purpose.  The lover of study for its own sake and the
+persistent trapper hunting a diploma as he would something to put
+in his mouth were not made to understand or to see much of each
+other.  Chance, however, brought us together.
+
+I had often surprised our friend sitting in the evening, by the
+light of a candle, with his elbows on the table and his head
+between his hands, meditating at great length in front of a big
+exercise book crammed with cabalistic signs.  From time to time,
+when an idea came to him, he would take his pen and hastily put
+down a line of writing wherein letters, large and small, were
+grouped without any grammatical sense.  The letters x and y often
+recurred, intermingled with figures.  Every row ended with the sign
+of equality and a nought.  Next came more reflection, with closed
+eyes, and a fresh row of letters arranged in a different order and
+likewise followed by a nought.  Page after page was filled in this
+queer fashion, each line winding up with 0.
+
+'What are you doing with all those rows of figures amounting to
+zero? ' I asked him one day.
+
+The mathematician gave me a leery look, picked up in barracks.  A
+sarcastic droop in the corner of his eye showed how he pitied my
+ignorance.  My colleague of the many noughts did not, however, take
+an unfair advantage of his superiority.  He told me that he was
+working at analytical geometry.
+
+The phrase had a strange effect upon me.  I ruminated silently to
+this purpose: there was a higher geometry, which you learnt more
+particularly with combinations of letters in which x and y played a
+prominent part.  When my next-door neighbor reflected so long,
+clutching his forehead between his hands, he was trying to discover
+the hidden meaning of his own hieroglyphics; he saw the ghostly
+translation of his sums dancing in space.  What did he perceive?
+How would the alphabetical signs, arranged first in one and then in
+another manner, give an image of the actual things, an image
+visible to the eyes of the mind alone?  It beat me.
+
+'I shall have to learn analytical geometry some day,' I said.
+'Will you help me? '
+
+'I'm quite willing,' he replied, with a smile in which I read his
+lack of confidence in my determination.
+
+No matter; we struck a bargain that same evening.  We would
+together break up the stubble of algebra and analytical geometry,
+the foundation of the mathematical degree; we would make common
+stock: he would bring long hours of calculation, I my youthful
+ardor.  We would begin as soon as I had finished with my arts
+degree, which was my main preoccupation for the moment.
+
+In those far off days it was the rule to make a little serious
+literary study take precedence of science.  You were expected to be
+familiar with the great minds of antiquity, to converse with Horace
+and Virgil, Theocritus and Plato, before touching the poisons of
+chemistry or the levers of mechanics.  The niceties of thought
+could only be the gainers by these preparations.  Life's
+exigencies, ever harsher as progress afflicts us with its
+increasing needs, have changed all that.  A fig for correct
+language! Business before all!
+
+This modern hurry would have suited my impatience.  I confess that
+I fumed against the regulation which forced Latin and Greek upon me
+before allowing me to open up relations with the sine and cosine.
+Today, wiser, ripened by age and experience, I am of a different
+opinion.  I very much regret that my modest literary studies were
+not more carefully conducted and further prolonged.  To fill up
+this enormous blank a little, I respectfully returned, somewhat
+late in life, to those good old books which are usually sold
+second-hand with their leaves hardly cut.  Venerable pages,
+annotated in pencil during the long evenings of my youth, I have
+found you again and you are more than ever my friends.  You have
+taught me that an obligation rests upon whoever wields the pen: he
+must have something to say that is capable of interesting us.  When
+the subject comes within the scope of natural science, the interest
+is nearly always assured; the difficulty, the great difficulty, is
+to prune it of its thorns and to present it under a prepossessing
+aspect.  Truth, they say, rises naked from a well.  Agreed; but
+admit that she is all the better for being decently clothed.  She
+craves, if not the gaudy furbelows borrowed from rhetoric's
+wardrobe, at least a vine leaf.  The geometers alone have the right
+to refuse her that modest garment; in theorems, plainness suffices.
+The others, especially the naturalist, are in duty bound to drape a
+gauze tunic more or less elegantly around her waist.
+
+Suppose I say: 'Baptiste, give me my slippers.'
+
+I am expressing myself in plain language, a little poor in
+variants.  I know exactly what I am saying and my speech is
+understood.
+
+Others--and they are numerous--contend that this rudimentary method
+is the best in all things.  They talk science to their readers as
+they might talk slippers to Baptiste.  Kaffir syntax does not shock
+them.  Do not speak to them of the value of a well selected term,
+set down in its right place, still less of a lilting construction,
+sounding rather well.  Childish nonsense they call all that; the
+fiddling of a short sighted mind!
+
+Perhaps they are right: the Baptiste idiom is a great economizer of
+time and trouble.  This advantage does not tempt me; it seems to me
+that an idea stands out better if expressed in lucid language, with
+sober imagery.  A suitable phrase, placed in its correct position
+and saying without fuss the things we want to say, necessitates a
+choice, an often laborious choice.  There are drab words, the
+commonplaces of colloquial speech; and there are, so to speak,
+colored words, which may be compared with the brushstrokes strewing
+patches of light over the gray background of a painting.  How are
+we to find those picturesque words, those striking features which
+arrest the attention?  How are we to group them into a language
+heedful of syntax and not displeasing to the ear?
+
+I was taught nothing of this art.  For that matter, is it ever
+taught in the schools?  I greatly doubt it.  If the fire that runs
+through our veins, if inspiration do not come to our aid, we shall
+flutter the pages of the thesaurus in vain: the word for which we
+seek will refuse to come.  Then to what masters shall we have
+recourse to quicken and develop the humble germ that is latent
+within us?  To books.
+
+As a boy, I was always an ardent reader; but the niceties of a
+well-balanced style hardly interested me: I did not understand
+them.  A good deal later, when close upon fifteen, I began vaguely
+to see that words have a physiognomy of their own.  Some pleased me
+better than others by the distinctness of their meaning and the
+resonance of their rhythm; they produced a clearer image in my
+mind; after their fashion, they gave me a picture of the object
+described.  Colored by its adjective and vivified by its verb, the
+name became a living reality: what it said I saw.  And thus,
+gradually, was the magic of words revealed to me, when the chances
+of, my undirected reading placed a few easy standard pages in my
+way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII  MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: MY LITTLE TABLE
+
+It is time to start our analytical geometry.  He can come now, my
+partner, the mathematician: I think I shall understand what he
+says.  I have already run through my book and noticed that our
+subject, whose beautiful precision makes work a recreation,
+bristles with no very serious difficulties.
+
+We begin in my room, in front of a blackboard.  After a few
+evenings, prolonged into the peaceful watches of the night, I
+become aware, to my great surprise, that my teacher, the past
+master in those hieroglyphics, is really, more often than not, my
+pupil.  He does not see the combinations of the abscissas and
+ordinates very clearly.  I make bold to take the chalk in hand
+myself, to seize the rudder of our algebraical boat.  I comment on
+the book, interpret it in my own fashion, expound the text, sound
+the reefs until daylight comes and leads us to the haven of the
+solution.  Besides, the logic is so irresistible, it is all such
+easy going and so lucid that often one seems to be remembering
+rather than learning.
+
+And so we proceed, with our positions reversed.  I dig into the
+hard rock, crumble it, loosen it until I make room for thought to
+penetrate.  My comrade--I can now allow myself to speak of him on
+equal terms--my comrade listens, suggests objections, raises
+difficulties which we try to solve in unison.  The two combined
+levers, inserted in the fissure, end by shaking and overturning the
+rocky mass.
+
+I no longer see in the corner of the quartermaster's eye the leery
+droop that greeted me at the start.  Cordial frankness now reigns,
+the infectious high spirits imparted by success.  Little by little,
+dawn breaks, very misty as yet, but laden with promises.  We are
+both greatly amazed; and my share in the satisfaction is a double
+one, for he sees twice over who makes others see.  Thus do we pass
+half the night, in delightful hours.  We cease when sleep begins to
+weigh too heavily on our eyelids.
+
+When my comrade returns to his room, does he sleep, careless for
+the moment of the shifting scene which we have conjured up?  He
+confesses to me that he sleeps soundly.  This advantage I do not
+possess.  It is not in my power to pass the sponge over my poor
+brain even as I pass it over the blackboard.  The network of ideas
+remains and forms as it were a moving cobweb in which repose
+wriggles and tosses, incapable of finding a stable equilibrium.
+When sleep does come at last, it is often but a state of somnolence
+which, far from suspending the activity of the mind, actually
+maintains and quickens it more than waking would.  During this
+torpor, in which night has not yet closed upon the brain, I
+sometimes solve mathematical difficulties with which I struggled
+unsuccessfully the day before.  A brilliant beacon, of which I am
+hardly conscious, flares in my brain.  Then I jump out of bed,
+light my lamp again and hasten to jot down my solutions, the
+recollection of which I should have lost on awakening.  Like
+lightning flashes, those gleams vanish as suddenly as they appear.
+
+Whence do they come?  Probably from a habit which I acquired very
+early in life: to have food always there for my mind, to pour the
+never failing oil constantly into the lamp of thought.  Would you
+succeed in the things of the mind?  The infallible method is to be
+always thinking of them.  This method I practiced more sedulously
+than my comrade; and hence, no doubt, arose the interchange of
+positions, the disciple turned into the master.  It was not,
+however, an overwhelming infatuation, a painful obsession; it was
+rather a recreation, almost a poetic feast.  As our great lyric
+writer put it in the preface to his volume, Les Rayons et les
+ombres: 'Mathematics play their part in art as well as in science.
+There is algebra in astronomy: astronomy is akin to poetry; there
+is algebra in music: music is akin to poetry.'
+
+Is this poetic exaggeration?  Surely not: Victor Hugo spoke truly.
+Algebra, the poem of order, has magnificent flights.  I look upon
+its formulae, its strophes as superb, without feeling at all
+astonished when others do not agree.  My colleague's satirical look
+came back when I was imprudent enough to confide my
+extrageometrical raptures to his ears: 'Nonsense,' said he, 'pure
+stuff and nonsense! Let's get on with our tangents.'
+
+The quartermaster was right: the strict severity of our approaching
+examination allowed of no such dreamer's outbursts.  Was I, on my
+side, very wrong?  To warm chill calculation by the fire of the
+ideal, to lift one's thought above mere formulae, to brighten the
+caverns of the abstract with a spark of life: was this not to ease
+the effort of penetrating the unknown?  Where my comrade plodded
+on, scorning my viaticum, I performed a journey of pleasure.  If I
+had to lean on the rude staff of algebra, I had for my guide that
+voice within me, urging me to lofty flights.  Study became a joy.
+
+It became still more interesting when, after the angularities of a
+combination of straight lines, I learnt to portray the graces of a
+curve.  How many properties were there of which the compass knew
+nothing, how many cunning laws lay contained in embryo within an
+equation, the mysterious nut which must be artistically cracked to
+extract the rich kernel, the theorem! Take this or that term, place
+the + sign before it and forthwith you have the ellipse, the
+trajectory of the planets, with its two friendly foci, transmitting
+pairs of vectors whose sum is constant; substitute the--sign and
+you have the hyperbola with the antagonistic foci, the desperate
+curve that dives into space with infinite tentacles, approaching
+nearer and nearer to straight lines, the asymptotes, but never
+succeeding in meeting them.  Suppress that term and you have the
+parabola, which vainly seeks in infinity its lost second focus; you
+have the trajectory of the bombshell; you have the path of certain
+comets which come one day to visit our sun and then flee to depths
+whence they never return.  Is it not wonderful thus to formulate
+the orbit of the worlds?  I thought so then and I think so still.
+
+After fifteen months of this exercise, we went up together for our
+examination at Montpellier; and both of us received our degrees as
+bachelors of mathematical science.  My companion was a wreck: I, on
+the other hand, had refreshed myself with analytical geometry.
+
+Utterly worn out by his course of conic sections, my chum declares
+that he has had enough.  In vain I hold out the glittering prospect
+of a new degree, that of licentiate of mathematical science, which
+would lead us to the splendors of the higher mathematics and
+initiate us into the mechanics of the heavens: I cannot prevail
+upon him, cannot make him share my audacity.  He calls it a mad
+scheme, which will exhaust us and come to nothing.  Without the
+advice of an experienced pilot, with no other compass than a book,
+which is not always very clear, because of its laconic adherence to
+set terms, our poor bark is bound to be wrecked on the first reef.
+One might as well put out to sea in a nutshell and defy the billows
+of the vasty deep.  He does not use these actual words, but his
+gloomy estimate of the extreme difficulties to be encountered is
+enough to explain his refusal.  I am quite free to go and break my
+neck in far countries; he is more prudent and will not follow me.
+
+I suspect another reason, which the deserter does not confess.  He
+has obtained the title needed for his plans.  What does he care for
+the rest?  Is it worth while to sit up late at night and wear one's
+self out in toil for the mere pleasure of learning?  He must be a
+madman who, without the lure of profit, lends an ear to the
+blandishments of knowledge.  Let us retreat into our shell, close
+our lid to the importunities of the light and lead the life of a
+mussel.  There lies the secret of happiness.
+This philosophy is not mine.  My curiosity sees in a stage
+accomplished no more than the preparation for a new stage towards
+the retreating unknown.  My partner, therefore.  leaves me.
+Henceforth, I am alone, alone and wretched.  There is no one left
+with whom I can sit up and thresh the subject out in exhilarating
+discussion.  There is no one near me to understand me, no one who
+can even passively oppose his ideas to mine and take part in the
+conflict whence the light will spring, even as a spark is born of
+the concussion of two flints.  When a difficulty arises, steep as a
+cliff, there is no friendly shoulder to support me in my attempt to
+climb it.  Alone, I have to cling to the roughness of the jagged
+rock, to fall, often, and pick myself up, covered with bruises, and
+renew the assault; alone, I must give my shout of triumph, without
+the least echo of encouragement, when, reaching the summit and
+broken in the effort, I am at last allowed to see a little way
+beyond.
+
+My mathematical campaign will cost me much stubborn thought: I am
+aware of this after the first few lines of my book.  I am entering
+upon the domain of the abstract, rough ground that can only be
+cleared by the insistent plow of reflection.  The blackboard,
+excellent for the curves of analytical geometry studied in my
+friend's company, is now neglected.  I prefer the exercise book, a
+quire of paper bound in a cover.  With this confidant, which allows
+one to remain seated and rests the muscles of the legs, I can
+commune nightly under my lampshade, until a late hour, and keep
+going the forge of thought wherein the intractable problem is
+softened and hammered into shape.
+
+My study table, the size of a pocket handkerchief, occupied on the
+right by the ink stand--a penny bottle--and on the left by the open
+exercise book, gives me just the room which I need to wield the
+pen.  I love that little piece of furniture, one of the first
+acquisitions of my early married life.  It is easily moved where
+you wish: in front of the window, when the sky is cloudy; into the
+discreet light of a corner, when the sun is troublesome.  In
+winter, it allows you to come close to the hearth, where a log is
+blazing.
+
+Poor little walnut board, I have been faithful to you for half a
+century and more.  Ink-stained, cut and scarred with the penknife,
+you lend your support today to my prose as you once did to my
+equations.  This variation in employment leaves you indifferent;
+your patient back extends the same welcome to the formulae of
+algebra and the formula of thought.  I cannot boast this placidity;
+I find that the change has not increased my peace of mind; hunting
+for ideas troubles the brain even more than hunting for the roots
+of an equation.
+
+You would never recognize me, little friend, if you could give a
+glance at my gray mane.  Where is the cheerful face of former days,
+bright with enthusiasm and hope?  I have aged, I have aged.  And
+you, what a falling off, since you came to me from the dealer's,
+gleaming and polished and smelling so good with your beeswax! Like
+your master, you have wrinkles, often my work, I admit; for how
+many times, in my impatience, have I not dug my pen into you, when,
+after its dip in the muddy inkpot, the nib refused to write
+decently!
+
+One of your corners is broken off; the boards are beginning to come
+loose.  Inside you, I hear, from time to time, the plane of the
+death-watch, who despoils old furniture.  From year to year, new
+galleries are excavated, endangering your solidity.  The old ones
+show on the outside in the shape of tiny round holes.  A stranger
+has seized upon the latter, excellent quarters, obtained without
+trouble.  I see the impudent intruder run nimbly under my elbow and
+penetrate forthwith into the tunnel abandoned by the death-watch.
+She is after game, this slender huntress, clad in black, busy
+collecting wood lice for her grubs.  A whole nation is devouring
+you, you old table; I am writing on a swarm of insects! No support
+could be more appropriate to my entomological notes.
+
+What will become of you when your master is gone?  Will you be
+knocked down for a franc, when the family come to apportion my poor
+spoils?  Will you be turned into a stand for the pitcher beside the
+kitchen sink?  Will you be the plank on which the cabbages are
+shredded?  Or will my children, on the contrary, agree and say:
+
+'Let us preserve the relic.  It was where he toiled so hard to
+teach himself and make himself capable of teaching others; it was
+where he so long consumed his strength to find food for us when we
+were little.  Let us keep the sacred plank.'
+
+I dare not believe in such a future for you.  You will pass into
+strange hands, O my old friend; you will become a bedside table,
+laden with bowl after bowl of linseed tea, until, decrepit, rickety
+and broken down, you are chopped up to feed the flames for a brief
+moment under the simmering saucepan.  You will vanish in smoke to
+join my labors in that other smoke, oblivion, the ultimate resting
+place of our vain agitations.
+
+But let us return, little table, to our young days; those of your
+shining varnish and of my fond illusions.  It is Sunday, the day of
+rest, that is to say, of continuous work, uninterrupted by my
+duties in the school.  I greatly prefer Thursday, which is not a
+general holiday and more propitious to studious calm.  Such as it
+is, for all its distractions, the Lord's day gives me a certain
+leisure.  Let us make the most of it.  There are fifty-two Sundays
+in the year, making a total that is almost equivalent to the long
+vacation.
+
+It so happens that I have a glorious question to wrestle with
+today; that of Kepler's three laws, which, when explored by the
+calculus, are to show me the fundamental mechanism of the heavenly
+bodies.  One of them says: 'The area swept out in a given time by
+the radius vector of the path of a planet is proportional to the
+time taken.'
+
+From this I have to deduce that the force which confines the planet
+to its orbit is directed towards the sun.  Gently entreated by the
+differential and integral calculus, already the formula is
+beginning to voice itself.  My concentration redoubles, my mind is
+set upon seizing the radiant dawn of truth.
+
+Suddenly, in the distance, br-r-r-rum! Br-r-r-rum! Br-r-r-rum! The
+noise comes nearer, grows louder.  Woe upon me! And plague take the
+Pagoda!
+
+Let me explain.  I live in a suburb, at the beginning of the Pernes
+Road, far from the tumult of the town [of Carpentras where Fabre
+was a master at the college].  Twenty yards in front of my house,
+some pleasure gardens have been opened, bearing a signboard
+inscribed, 'The Pagoda.' Here, on Sunday afternoons, the lads and
+lasses from the neighboring farms come to disport themselves in
+country dances.  To attract custom and push the sale of
+refreshments, the proprietor of the ball ends the Sunday hop with a
+tombola.  Two hours beforehand, he has the prizes carried along the
+public roads, preceded by fifes and drums.  From a beribboned pole,
+borne by a stalwart fellow in a red sash, dangle a plated goblet, a
+handkerchief of Lyons silk, a pair of candlesticks and some packets
+of cigars.  Who would not enter the pleasure gardens, with such a
+bait?
+
+'Br-r-r-rum! Br-r-r-rum! Br-r-r-rum!' goes the procession.
+
+It comes just under my window, wheels to the right and marches into
+the establishment, a huge wooden booth, hung with evergreens.  And
+now, if you dislike noise, flee, flee as far as you can.  Until
+nightfall, the ophicleides will bellow, the fifes tootle and the
+cornets bray.  How would you deduce the steps of Kepler's laws to
+the accompaniment of that noisy orchestra! It is enough to drive
+one mad.  Let us be off with all speed.
+
+A mile away, I know a flinty waste beloved of the wheatear and the
+locust.  Here reigns perfect calm; moreover, there are some clumps
+of evergreen oak which will lend me their scanty shade.  I take my
+book, a few sheets of paper and a pencil and fly to this solitude.
+What beauteous silence, what exquisite quiet! But the sun is
+overwhelming, under the meager cover of the bushes.  Cheerily, my
+lad! Have at your Kepler's laws in the company of the blue-winged
+locusts.  You will return home with your problems solved, but with
+a blistered skin.  An overdose of sun in the neck shall be the
+outcome of grasping the law of the areas.  One thing makes up for
+another.
+
+During the rest of the week, I have my Thursdays and the evenings,
+which I employ in study until I drop with sleep.  All told I have
+no lack of time, despite the drudgery of my college ties.  The
+great thing is not to be discouraged by the unavoidable
+difficulties encountered at the outset.  I lose my way easily in
+that dense forest overgrown with creepers that have to be cut away
+with the axe to obtain a clearing.  A fortunate turn or two; and I
+once more know where I am.  I lose my way again.  The stubborn axe
+makes its opening without always letting in sufficient light.
+
+The book is just a book, that is to say, a set text, saying not a
+word more than it is obliged to, exceedingly learned, I admit, but,
+alas, often obscure! The author, it seems, wrote it for himself.
+He understood; therefore others must.  Poor beginners, left to
+yourselves, you manage as best you can! For you, there shall be no
+retracing of steps in order to tackle the difficulty in another
+way; no circuit easing the arduous road and preparing the passage;
+no supplementary aperture to admit a glimmer of daylight.
+Incomparably inferior to the spoken word, which begins again with
+fresh methods of attack and is ready to vary the paths that lead to
+the open, the book says what it says and nothing more.  Having
+finished its demonstration, whether you understand or no, the
+oracle is inexorably dumb.  You reread the text and ponder it
+obstinately; you pass and repass your shuttle through the woof of
+figures.  Useless efforts all: the darkness continues.  What would
+be needed to supply the illuminating ray?  Often enough, a trifle,
+a mere word; and that word the book will not speak.
+
+Happy is he who is guided by a master's teaching! His progress does
+not know the misery of those wearisome breakdowns.  What was I to
+do before the disheartening wall that every now and then rose up
+and barred my road?  I followed d'Alembert's precept in his advice
+to young mathematical students: 'Have faith and go ahead,' said the
+great geometrician.
+
+Faith I had; and I went on pluckily.  And it was well for me that I
+did, for I often found behind the wall the enlightenment which I
+was seeking in front of it.  Giving up the bad patch as hopeless, I
+would go on and, after I had left it behind, discover the dynamite
+capable of blasting it.  'Twas a tiny grain at first, an
+insignificant ball rolling and increasing as it went.  From one
+slope to the other of the theorems, it grew to a heavy mass; and
+the mass became a mighty projectile which, flung backwards and
+retracing its course, split the darkness and spread it into one
+vast sheet of light.
+
+D'Alembert's precept is good and very good, provided you do not
+abuse it.  Too much precipitation in turning over the intractable
+page might expose you to many a disappointment.  You must have
+fought the difficulty tooth and nail before abandoning it.  This
+rough skirmishing leads to intellectual vigor.
+
+Twelve months of meditation in the company of my little table at
+last won me my degree as a licentiate of mathematical science; and
+I was now qualified to perform, half a century later, the eminently
+lucrative functions of an inspector of Spiders' webs!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV  THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE LAYING
+
+To purge the earth of death's impurities and cause deceased animal
+matter to be once more numbered among the treasures of life there
+are hosts of sausage queens, including, in our part of the world,
+the bluebottle (Calliphora vomitaria, LIN.) and the checkered flesh
+fly (Sarcophaga carnaria, LIN.).  Every one knows the first, the
+big, dark-blue fly who, after effecting her designs in the ill-
+watched meat safe, settles on our window panes and keeps up a
+solemn buzzing, anxious to be off in the sun and ripen a fresh
+emission of germs.  How does she lay her eggs, the origin of the
+loathsome maggot that battens poisonously on our provisions,
+whether of game or butcher's meat?  What are her stratagems and how
+can we foil them?  This is what I propose to investigate.
+
+The bluebottle frequents our homes during autumn and a part of
+winter, until the cold becomes severe; but her appearance in the
+fields dates back much earlier.  On the first fine day in February,
+we shall see her warming herself, chillily, against the sunny
+walls.  In April, I notice her in considerable numbers on the
+laurestinus.  It is here that she seems to pair, while sipping the
+sugary exudations of the small white flowers.  The whole of the
+summer season is spent out of doors, in brief flights from one
+refreshment bar to the next.  When autumn comes, with its game, she
+makes her way into our houses and remains until the hard frosts.
+
+This suits my stay-at-home habits and especially my legs, which are
+bending under the weight of years.  I need not run after the
+subjects of my present study; they call on me.  Besides, I have
+vigilant assistants.  The household knows of my plans.  Every one
+brings me, in a little screw of paper, the noisy visitor just
+captured against the panes.
+
+Thus do I fill my vivarium, which consists of a large, bell-shaped
+cage of wire gauze, standing in an earthenware pan full of sand.  A
+mug containing honey is the dining room of the establishment.  Here
+the captives come to recruit themselves in their hours of leisure.
+To occupy their maternal cares, I employ small birds--chaffinches,
+linnets, sparrows--brought down, in the enclosure, by my son's gun.
+
+I have just served up a Linnet shot two days ago.  I next place in
+the cage a bluebottle, one only, to avoid confusion.  Her fat belly
+proclaims the advent of a laying time.  An hour later, when the
+excitement of being put in prison is allayed, my captive is in
+labor.  With eager, jerky steps, she explores the morsel of game,
+goes from the head to the tail, returns from the tail to the head,
+repeats the action several times and at last settles near an eye, a
+dimmed eye sunk into its socket.
+
+The ovipositor bends at a right angle and dives into the junction
+of the beak, straight down to the root.  Then the eggs are emitted
+for nearly half an hour.  The layer, utterly absorbed in her
+serious business, remains stationary and impassive and is easily
+observed through my lens.  A movement on my part would doubtless
+scare her; but my restful presence gives her no anxiety.  I am
+nothing to her.
+
+The discharge does not go on continuously until the ovaries are
+exhausted; it is intermittent and performed in so many packets.
+Several times over, the fly leaves the bird's beak and comes to
+take a rest upon the wire gauze, where she brushes her hind legs
+one against the other.  In particular, before using it again, she
+cleans, smoothes and polishes her laying tool, the probe that
+places the eggs.  Then, feeling her womb still teeming, she returns
+to the same spot at the joint of the beak.  The delivery is
+resumed, to cease presently and then begin anew.  A couple of hours
+are thus spent in alternate standing near the eye and resting on
+the wire gauze.
+
+At last, it is over.  The fly does not go back to the bird, a proof
+that her ovaries are exhausted.  The next day, she is dead.  The
+eggs are dabbed in a continuous layer, at the entrance to the
+throat, at the root of the tongue, on the membrane of the palate.
+Their number appears considerable; the whole inside of the gullet
+is white with them.  I fix a little wooden prop between the two
+mandibles of the beak, to keep them open and enable me to see what
+happens.
+
+I learn in this way that the hatching takes place in a couple of
+days.  As soon as they are born, the young vermin, a swarming mass,
+leave the place where they are and disappear down the throat.  To
+inquire further into the work is useless for the moment.  We shall
+learn more about it later, under conditions that make examination
+easier.
+
+The beak of the bird invaded was closed at the start, as far as the
+natural contact of the mandibles allowed.  There remained a narrow
+slit at the base, sufficient at most to admit the passage of a
+horsehair.  It was through this that the laying was performed.
+Lengthening her ovipositor like a telescope, the mother inserted
+the point of her implement, a point slightly hardened with a horny
+armor.  The fineness of the probe equals the fineness of the
+aperture.  But, if the beak were entirely closed, where would the
+eggs be laid then?
+
+With a tied thread, I keep the two mandibles in absolute contact;
+and I place a second bluebottle in the presence of the linnet,
+which the colonists have already entered by the beak.  This time,
+the laying takes place on one of the eyes, between the lid and the
+eyeball.  At the hatching, which again occurs a couple of days
+later, the grubs make their way into the fleshy depths of the
+socket.  The eyes and the beak, therefore, form the two chief
+entrances into feathered game.
+
+There are others; and these are the wounds.  I cover the linnet's
+head with a paper hood which will prevent invasion through the beak
+and eyes.  I serve it, under the wire gauze bell, to a third egg
+layer.  The bird has been struck by a shot in the breast, but the
+sore is not bleeding: no outer stain marks the injured spot.
+Moreover, I am careful to arrange the feathers, to smooth them with
+a hair pencil, so that the bird looks quite smart and has every
+appearance of being untouched.
+
+The fly is soon there.  She inspects the linnet from end to end;
+with her front tarsi she fumbles at the breast and belly.  It is a
+sort of auscultation by sense of touch.  The insect becomes aware
+of what is under the feathers by the manner in which these react.
+If scent comes to her assistance, it can only be very slightly, for
+the game is not yet high.  The wound is soon found.  No drop of
+blood is near it, for it is closed by a plug of down rammed into it
+by the shot.  The fly takes up her position without separating the
+feathers or uncovering the wound.  She remains here for two hours
+without stirring, motionless, with her abdomen concealed beneath
+the plumage.  My eager curiosity does not distract her from her
+business for a moment.
+
+When she has finished, I take her place.  There is nothing either
+on the skin or at the mouth of the wound.  I have to withdraw the
+downy plug and dig to some depth before discovering the eggs.  The
+ovipositor has therefore lengthened its extensible tube and pushed
+beyond the feather stopper driven in by the lead.  The eggs are in
+one packet; they number about three hundred.
+
+When the beak and eyes are rendered inaccessible, when the body,
+moreover, has no wounds, the laying still takes place, but, this
+time, in a hesitating and niggardly fashion.  I pluck the bird
+completely, the better to watch what happens; also, I cover the
+head with a paper hood to close the usual means of access.  For a
+long time, with jerky steps, the mother explores the body in every
+direction; she takes her stand by preference on the head, which she
+sounds by tapping on it with her front tarsi.  She knows that the
+openings which she needs are there, under the paper; but she also
+knows how frail are her grubs, how powerless to pierce their way
+through the strange obstacle which stops her as well and interferes
+with the work of her ovipositor.  The cowl inspires her with
+profound distrust.  Despite the tempting bait of the veiled head,
+not an egg is laid on the wrapper, slight though it may be.
+
+Weary of vain attempts to compass this obstacle, the Fly at last
+decides in favor of other points, but not on the breast, belly or
+back, where the hide would seem too tough and the light too
+intrusive.  She needs dark hiding places, corners where the skin is
+very delicate.  The spots chosen are the cavity of the axilla,
+corresponding with our armpit, and the crease where the thigh joins
+the belly.  Eggs are laid in both places, but not many, showing
+that the groin and the axilla are adopted only reluctantly and for
+lack of a better spot.
+
+With an unplucked bird, also hooded, the same experiment failed:
+the feathers prevent the fly from slipping into those deep places.
+Let us add, in conclusion, that, on a skinned bird, or simply on a
+piece of butcher's meat, the laying is effected on any part
+whatever, provided that it be dark.  The gloomiest corners are the
+favorite ones.
+
+It follows from all this that, to lay the eggs, the Bluebottle
+picks out either naked wounds or else the mucous membranes of the
+mouth or eyes, which are not protected by a skin of any thickness.
+She also needs darkness.  We shall see the reasons for her
+preference later on.
+
+The perfect efficiency of the paper bag, which prevents the inroads
+of the worms through the eye sockets or the beak, suggests a
+similar experiment with the whole bird.  It is a matter of wrapping
+the body in a sort of artificial skin which will be as discouraging
+to the fly as the natural skin.  Linnets, some with deep wounds,
+others almost intact, are placed one by one in paper envelopes
+similar to those in which the nursery gardener keeps his seeds,
+envelopes just folded, without being stuck.  The paper is quite
+ordinary and of average thickness.  Torn pieces of newspaper serve
+the purpose.
+
+These sheaths with the corpses inside them are freely exposed to
+the air, on the table in my study, where they are visited,
+according to the time of day, in dense shade and in bright
+sunlight.  Attracted by the effluvia from the dead meat, the
+bluebottles haunt my laboratory, the windows of which are always
+open.  I see them daily alighting on the envelopes and very busily
+exploring them, apprised of the contents by the gamy smell.  Their
+incessant coming and going is a sign of intense cupidity; and yet
+none of them decides to lay on the bags.  They do not even attempt
+to slide their ovipositor through the slits of the folds.  The
+favorable season passes and not an egg is laid on the tempting
+wrappers.  All the mothers abstain, judging the slender obstacle of
+the paper to be more than the vermin will be able to overcome.
+
+This caution on the fly's part does not at all surprise me:
+motherhood everywhere has gleams of great perspicacity.  What does
+astonish me is the following result.  The parcels containing the
+linnets are left for a whole year uncovered on the table; they
+remain there for a second year and a third.  I inspect the contents
+from time to time.  The little birds are intact, with unrumpled
+feathers, free from smell, dry and light, like mummies.  They have
+become not decomposed, but mummified.
+
+I expected to see them putrefying, running into sanies, like
+corpses left to rot in the open air.  On the contrary, the birds
+have dried and hardened, without undergoing any change.  What did
+they want for their putrefaction?  Simply the intervention of the
+fly.  The maggot, therefore, is the primary cause of dissolution
+after death; it is, above all, the putrefactive chemist.
+
+A conclusion not devoid of value may be drawn from my paper game
+bags.  In our markets, especially in those of the South, the game
+is hung unprotected from the hooks on the stalls.  Larks strung up
+by the dozen with a wire through their nostrils, thrushes, plovers,
+teal, partridges, snipe, in short, all the glories of the spit
+which the autumn migration brings us, remain for days and weeks at
+the mercy of the flies.  The buyer allows himself to be tempted by
+a goodly exterior; he makes his purchase and, back at home, just
+when the bird is being prepared for roasting, he discovers that the
+promised dainty is alive with worms.  O horror! There is nothing
+for it but to throw the loathsome, verminous thing away.
+
+The bluebottle is the culprit here.  Everybody knows it; and nobody
+thinks of seriously shaking off her tyranny: not the retailer, nor
+the wholesale dealer, nor the killer of the game.  What is wanted
+to keep the maggots out?  Hardly anything: to slip each bird into a
+paper sheath.  If this precaution were taken at the start, before
+the flies arrive, any game would be safe and could be left
+indefinitely to attain the degree of ripeness required by the
+epicure's palate.
+
+Stuffed with olives and myrtle berries, the Corsican blackbirds are
+exquisite eating.  We sometimes receive them at Orange, layers of
+them, packed in baskets through which the air circulates freely and
+each contained in a paper wrapper.  They are in a state of perfect
+preservation, complying with the most exacting demands of the
+kitchen.  I congratulate the nameless shipper who conceived the
+bright idea of clothing his blackbirds in paper.  Will his example
+find imitators?  I doubt it.
+
+There is, of course, a serious objection to this method of
+preservation.  In its paper shroud, the article is invisible; it is
+not enticing; it does not inform the passer by of its nature and
+qualities.  There is one resource left which would leave the bird
+uncovered: simply to case the head in a paper cap.  The head being
+the part most threatened, because of the mucus membrane of the
+throat and eyes, it would be sufficient, as a rule, to protect the
+head, in order to keep off the Flies and to thwart their attempts.
+
+Let us continue to study the bluebottle, while varying our means of
+information.  A tin, about four inches deep, contains a piece of
+butcher's meat.  The lid is not put in quite straight and leaves a
+narrow slit at one point of its circumference, allowing, at most,
+of the passage of a fine needle.  When the bait begins to give off
+a gamy scent, the mothers come.  Singly or in numbers.  They are
+attracted by the odor which, transmitted through a thin crevice,
+hardly reaches my nostrils.
+
+They explore the metal receptacle for some time, seeking an
+entrance.  Finding naught that enables them to reach the coveted
+morsel, they decide to lay their eggs on the tin, just beside the
+aperture.  Sometimes, when the width of the passage allows of it,
+they insert the ovipositor into the tin and lay the eggs inside, on
+the very edges of the slit.  Whether outside or in, the eggs are
+dabbed down in a fairly regular and absolutely white layer.  I as
+it were shovel them up with a little paper scoop.  I thus obtain
+all the germs that I require for my experiments, eggs bearing no
+trace of the stains which would be inevitable if I had to collect
+them on tainted meat.
+
+We have seen the bluebottle refusing to lay her eggs on the paper
+bag, notwithstanding the carrion fumes of the Linnet enclosed; yet
+now, without hesitation, she lays them on a sheet of metal.  Can
+the nature of the floor make any difference to her?  I replace the
+tin lid by a paper cover stretched and pasted over the orifice.
+With the point of my knife, I make a narrow slit in this new lid.
+That is quite enough: the parent accepts the paper.
+
+What determined her, therefore, is not simply the smell, which can
+easily be perceived even through the uncut paper, but, above all,
+the crevice, which will provide an entrance for the vermin, hatched
+outside, near the narrow passage.  The maggots' mother has her own
+logic, her prudent foresight.  She knows how feeble her wee grubs
+will be, how powerless to cut their way through an obstacle of any
+resistance; and so, despite the temptation of the smell, she
+refrains from laying so long as she finds no entrance through which
+the newborn worms can slip unaided.
+
+I wanted to know whether the color, the shininess, the degree of
+hardness and other qualities of the obstacle would influence the
+decision of a mother obliged to lay her eggs under exceptional
+conditions.  With this object in view, I employed small jars, each
+baited with a bit of butcher's meat.  The respective lids were made
+of different colored paper, of oilskin, or of some of that tinfoil,
+with its gold or coppery sheen, which is used for sealing liqueur
+bottles.  On not one of these covers did the mothers stop, with any
+desire to deposit their eggs; but, from the moment that the knife
+had made the narrow slit, all the lids were, sooner or later,
+visited and all of them, sooner or later, received the white shower
+somewhere near the gash.  The look of the obstacle, therefore, does
+not count; dull or brilliant, drab or colored: these are details of
+no importance; the thing that matters is that there should be a
+passage to allow the grubs to enter.
+
+Though hatched outside, at a distance from the coveted morsel, the
+newborn worms are well able to find their refectory.  As they
+release themselves from the egg, without hesitation, so accurate is
+their scent, they slip beneath the edge of the ill-joined lid, or
+through the passage cut by the knife.  Behold them entering upon
+their promised land, their reeking paradise.
+
+Eager to arrive, do they drop from the top of the wall?  Not they!
+Slowly creeping, they make their way down the side of the jar; they
+use their fore part, ever in quest of information, as a crutch and
+grapnel in one.  They reach the meat and at once install themselves
+upon it.
+
+Let us continue our investigation, varying the conditions.  A large
+test-tube, measuring nine inches high, is baited at the bottom with
+a lump of butcher's meat.  It is closed with wire gauze, whose
+meshes, two millimeters wide, do not permit of the fly's passage.
+The bluebottle comes to my apparatus, guided by scent rather than
+sight.  She hastens to the test tube whose contents are veiled
+under an opaque cover with the same alacrity as to the open tube.
+The invisible attracts her quite as much as the visible.
+
+She stays a while on the lattice of the mouth, inspects it
+attentively; but, whether because circumstances have failed to
+serve me, or because the wire network inspires her with distrust, I
+never saw her dab her eggs upon it for certain.  As her evidence
+was doubtful, I had recourse to the flesh fly (Sarcophaga
+carnaria).
+
+This fly is less finicky in her preparations, she has more faith in
+the strength of her worms, which are born ready-formed and
+vigorous, and easily shows me what I wish to see.  She explores the
+trellis-work, chooses a mesh through which she inserts the tip of
+her abdomen and, undisturbed by my presence, emits, one after the
+other, a certain number of grubs, about ten or so.  True, her
+visits will be repeated, increasing the family at a rate of which I
+am ignorant.
+
+The newborn worms, thanks to a slight viscidity, cling for a moment
+to the wire gauze; they swarm, wriggle, release themselves and leap
+into the chasm.  It is a nine inch drop at least.  When this is
+done, the mother makes off, knowing for a certainty that her
+offspring will shift for themselves.  If they fall on the meat,
+well and good; if they fall elsewhere, they can reach the morsel by
+crawling.
+
+This confidence in the unknown factor of the precipice, with no
+indication but that of smell, deserves fuller, investigation.  From
+what height will the flesh fly dare to let her children drop?  I
+top the test-tube with another tube, the width of the neck of a
+claret bottle.  The mouth is closed either with wire gauze, or with
+a paper cover with a slight cut in it.  Altogether, the apparatus
+measures twenty-five inches in height.  No matter: the fall is not
+serious for the lithe backs of the young grubs; and, in a few days,
+the test-tube is filled with larvae, in which it is easy to
+recognize the flesh fly's family by the fringed coronet that opens
+and shuts at the maggot's stern like the petals of a little flower.
+I did not see the mother operating: I was not there at the time;
+but there is no doubt possible of her coming nor of the great dive
+taken by the family: the contents of the test-tube furnish me with
+a duly authenticated certificate.
+
+I admire the leap and, to obtain one better still, I replace the
+tube by another, so that the apparatus now stands forty-six inches
+high.  The column is erected at a spot frequented by flies, in a
+dim light.  Its mouth, closed with a wire gauze cover, reaches the
+level of various other appliances, test-tubes and jars, which are
+already stocked or awaiting their colony of vermin.  When the
+position is well known to the flies, I remove the other tubes and
+leave the column, lest the visitors should turn aside to easier
+ground.
+
+From time to time, the bluebottle and the flesh fly perch on the
+trellis-work, make a short investigation and then decamp.
+Throughout the summer season, for three whole months, the apparatus
+remains where it is, without the least result: never a worm.  What
+is the reason?  Does the stench of the meat not spread, coming from
+that depth?  Certainly it spreads: it is unmistakable to my dulled
+nostrils and still more so to the nostrils of my children, whom I
+call to bear witness.  Then why does the flesh fly, who but now was
+dropping her grubs from a goodly height, refuse to let them fall
+from the top of a column twice as high?  Does she fear lest her
+worms should be bruised by an excessive drop?  There is nothing
+about her to point to anxiety aroused by the length of the shaft.
+I never see her explore the tube or take its size.  She stands on
+the trellised orifice; and there the matter ends.  Can she be
+apprised of the depth of the chasm by the comparative faintness of
+the offensive odors that arise from it?  Can the sense of smell
+measure the distance and judge whether it be acceptable or not?
+Perhaps.
+
+The fact remains that, despite the attraction of the scent, the
+flesh fly does not expose her worms to disproportionate falls.  Can
+she know beforehand that, when the chrysalides break, her winged
+family, knocking with a sudden flight against the sides of a tall
+chimney, will be unable to get out?  This foresight would be in
+agreement with the rules which order maternal instinct according to
+future needs.
+
+But when the fall does not exceed a certain depth, the budding
+worms of the flesh fly are dropped without a qualm, as all our
+experiments show.  This principle has a practical application which
+is not without its value in matters of domestic economy.  It is as
+well that the wonders of entomology should sometimes give us a hint
+of commonplace utility.
+
+The usual meat safe is a sort of large cage with a top and bottom
+of wood and four wire gauze sides.  Hooks fixed into the top are
+used whereby to hang pieces which we wish to protect from the
+flies.  Often, so as to employ the space to the best advantage,
+these pieces are simply laid on the floor on the cage.  With these
+arrangements, are we sure of warding off the fly and her vermin?
+
+Not at all.  We may protect ourselves against the Bluebottle, who
+is not much inclined to lay her eggs at a distance from the meat;
+but there is still the flesh fly, who is more venturesome and goes
+more briskly to work and who will slip the grubs through a hole in
+the meshes and drop them inside the safe.  Agile as they are and
+well able to crawl, the worms will easily reach anything on the
+floor; the only things secure from their attacks will be the pieces
+hanging from the ceiling.  It is not in the nature of maggots to
+explore the heights, especially if this implies climbing down a
+string in addition.
+
+People also use wire gauze dish covers.  The trellised dome
+protects the contents even less than does the meat safe.  The flesh
+fly takes no heed of it.  She can drop her worms through the meshes
+on the covered joint.
+
+Then what are we to do?  Nothing could be simpler.  We need only
+wrap the birds which we wish to preserve--thrushes, partridges,
+snipe and so on--in separate paper envelopes; and the same with our
+beef and mutton.  This defensive armor alone, while leaving ample
+room for the air to circulate, makes any invasion by the worms
+impossible, even without a cover or a meat safe: not that paper
+possesses any special preservative virtues, but solely because it
+forms an impenetrable barrier.  The Bluebottle carefully refrains
+from laying her eggs upon it and the flesh fly from bringing forth
+her offspring, both of them knowing that their newborn young are
+incapable of piercing the obstacle.
+
+Paper is equally successful in our strife against the Moths, those
+plagues of our furs and clothes.  To keep away these wholesale
+ravages, people generally use camphor, naphthalene, tobacco,
+bunches of lavender and other strong-scented remedies.  Without
+wishing to malign those preservatives, we are bound to admit that
+the means employed are none too effective.  The smell does very
+little to prevent the havoc of the moths.
+
+I would therefore counsel our housewives, instead of all this
+chemist's stuff, to use newspapers of a suitable shape and size.
+Take whatever you wish to protect--your furs, your flannel or your
+clothes--and pack each article carefully in a newspaper, joining
+the edges with a double fold, well pinned.  If this joining is
+properly done, the Moth will never get inside.  Since my advice has
+been taken and this method employed in my household, the old damage
+has never been repeated.
+
+To return to the fly.  A piece of meat is hidden in a jar under a
+layer of fine, dry sand, a finger's-breadth thick.  The jar has a
+wide mouth and is left quite open.  Let whoever come that will,
+attracted by the smell.  The Bluebottles are not long in inspecting
+what I have prepared for them: they enter the jar, go out and come
+back again, inquiring into the invisible thing revealed by its
+fragrance.  A diligent watch enables me to see them fussing about,
+exploring the sandy expanse, tapping it with their feet, sounding
+it with their proboscis.  I leave the visitors undisturbed for a
+fortnight or three weeks.  None of them lays any eggs.
+
+This is a repetition of what the paper bag, with its dead bird,
+showed me.  The flies refuse to lay on the sand, apparently for the
+same reasons.  The paper was considered an obstacle which the frail
+vermin would not be able to overcome.  With sand, the case is
+worse.  Its grittiness would hurt the newborn weaklings, its
+dryness would absorb the moisture indispensable to their movements.
+Later, when preparing for the metamorphosis, when their strength
+has come to them, the grubs will dig the earth quite well and be
+able to descend; but, at the start, that would be very dangerous
+for them.  Knowing these difficulties, the mothers, however greatly
+tempted by the smell, abstain from breeding.  As a matter of fact,
+after long waiting, fearing lest some packets of eggs may have
+escaped my attention, I inspect the contents of the jar from top to
+bottom.  Meat and sand contain neither larvae nor pupae: the whole
+is absolutely deserted.
+
+The layer of sand being only a finger's-breadth thick, this
+experiment requires certain precautions.  The meat may expand a
+little, in going bad, and protrude in one or two places.  However
+small the fleshy eyots that show above the surface, the flies come
+to them and breed.  Sometimes also the juices oozing from the
+putrid meat soak a small extent of the sandy floor.  That is enough
+for the maggot's first establishment.  These causes of failure are
+avoided with a layer of sand about an inch thick.  Then the
+bluebottle, the flesh fly and other flies whose grubs batten on
+dead bodies are kept at a proper distance.
+
+In the hope of awakening us to a proper sense of our
+insignificance, pulpit orators sometimes make an unfair use of the
+grave and its worms.  Let us put no faith in their doleful
+rhetoric.  The chemistry of man's final dissolution is eloquent
+enough of our emptiness: there is no need to add imaginary horrors.
+The worm of the sepulchre is an invention of cantankerous minds,
+incapable of seeing things as they are.  Covered by but a few
+inches of earth, the dead can sleep their quiet sleep: no fly will
+ever come to take advantage of them.
+
+At the surface of the soil, exposed to the air, the hideous
+invasion is possible; ay, it is the invariable rule.  For the
+melting down and remolding of matter, man is no better, corpse for
+corpse, than the lowest of the brutes.  Then the fly exercises her
+rights and deals with us as she does with any ordinary animal
+refuse.  Nature treats us with magnificent indifference in her
+great regenerating factory: placed in her crucibles, animals and
+men, beggars and kings are one and all alike.  There you have true
+equality, the only equality in this world of ours: equality in the
+presence of the maggot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV  THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE GRUB
+
+The larvae of the bluebottle hatch within two days in the warm
+weather.  Whether inside my apparatus, in direct contact with the
+piece of meat, or outside, on the edge of a slit that enables them
+to enter, they set to work at once.  They do not eat, in the strict
+sense of the word, that is to say, they do not tear their food, do
+not chew it by means of implements of mastication.  Their mouth
+parts do not lend themselves to this sort of work.  These mouth
+parts are two horny spikes, sliding one upon the other, with curved
+ends that do not face, thus excluding the possibility of any
+function such as seizing and grinding.
+
+The two guttural grapnels serve for walking much rather than for
+feeding.  The worm plants them alternately in the road traversed
+and, by contracting its crupper, advances just that distance.  It
+carries in its tubular throat the equivalent of our iron tipped
+sticks which give support and assist progress.
+
+Thanks to this machinery of the mouth, the maggot not only moves
+over the surface, but also easily penetrates the meat: I see it
+disappear as though it were dipping into butter.  It cuts its way,
+levying, as it goes, a preliminary toll, but only of liquid
+mouthfuls.  Not the smallest solid particle is detached and
+swallowed.  That is not the maggot's diet.  It wants a broth, a
+soup, a sort of fluid extract of beef which it prepares itself.  As
+digestion, after all, merely means liquefaction, we may say,
+without being guilty of paradox, that the grub of the bluebottle
+digests its food before swallowing it.
+
+With the object of relieving gastric troubles, our manufacturing
+chemists scrape the stomachs of the pig and sheep and thus obtain
+pepsin, a digestive agent which possesses the property of
+liquefying albuminous matters and lean meat in particular.  Why
+cannot they rasp the stomach of the maggot! They would obtain a
+product of the highest quality, for the carnivorous worm also owns
+its pepsin, pepsin of a singularly active kind, as the following
+experiments will show us.
+
+I divide the white of a hard-boiled egg into tiny cubes and place
+them in a little test-tube.  On the top of the contents, I sprinkle
+the eggs of the bluebottle, eggs free from the least stain, taken
+from those laid on the outside of tins baited with meat and not
+absolutely shut.  A similar test-tube is filled with white of egg,
+but receives no germs.  Both are closed with a plug of cotton-wool
+and left in a dark corner.
+
+In a few days, the tube swarming with newborn vermin contains a
+liquid as fluid and transparent as water.  Not a drop would remain
+in the tube if I turned it upside down.  All the white of egg has
+disappeared, liquefied.  As for the worms, which are already a fair
+size, they seem very ill at ease.  Deprived of a support whence to
+attain the outer air, most of them dive into the broth of their own
+making, where they perish by drowning.  Others, endowed with
+greater vigor, crawl up the glass to the plug and manage to make
+their way through the wadding.  Their pointed front, armed with
+grappling irons, is the nail that penetrates the fibrous mass.
+
+In the other test-tube, standing beside the first and subjected to
+the same atmospheric influences, nothing striking has occurred.
+The hard-boiled white of egg has retained its dead white color and
+its firmness.  I find it as I left it.  The utmost that I observe
+is a few traces of must.  The result of this first experiment is
+patent: the Bluebottle's grub is the medium that converts
+coagulated albumen into a liquid.
+
+The value of chemist's pepsin is estimated by the quantity of hard-
+boiled white of egg which a gram of that agent can liquefy.  The
+mixture has to be exposed in an oven to a temperature of 1400 F.
+and also to be frequently shaken.  My preparation, in which the
+bluebottle's eggs are hatched, is neither shaken nor subjected to
+the heat of an oven; everything happens in quietness and under the
+thermometric conditions of the surrounding air; nevertheless, in a
+few days, the coagulated albumen, treated by the vermin, runs like
+water.
+
+The reagent that causes this liquefaction escapes my endeavors to
+detect it.  The worms must disgorge it in infinitesimal doses,
+while the spikes in their throats, which are in continual movement,
+emerge a little way from the mouth, reenter and reappear.  Those
+piston thrusts, those quasi-kisses, are accompanied by the emission
+of the solvent: at least, that is how I picture it.  The maggot
+spits on its food, places on it the wherewithal to make it into
+broth.  To appraise the quantity of the matter expectorated is
+beyond my powers: I observe the result, but do not perceive the
+leavening agent.
+
+Well, this result is really astounding, when we consider the
+scantiness of the means.  No pig's or sheep's pepsin can rival that
+of the worm.  I have a bottle of pepsin that comes from the School
+of Chemistry at Montpellier.  I lavishly powder some pieces of
+hard-boiled white of egg with the potent drug, just as I did with
+the eggs of the Bluebottle.  The oven is not brought into play,
+neither is distilled water added, nor hydrochloric acid: two
+auxiliaries which are recommended.  The experiment is conducted in
+exactly the same way as that of the tubes with the vermin.  The
+result is entirely different from what I expected.  The white of
+egg does not liquefy.  It simply becomes moist on the surface; and
+even this moisture may come from the pepsin, which is highly
+absorbent.  Yes, I was right: if the thing were feasible, it would
+be an advantage for the chemists to collect their digestive drug
+from the stomach of the maggot.  The worm, in this case, beats the
+pig and the sheep.
+
+The same method is followed for the remaining experiments.  I put
+the bluebottle's eggs to hatch on a piece of meat and leave the
+worms to do their work as they please.  The lean tissues, whether
+of mutton, beef or pork, no matter which, are not turned into
+liquid; they become a pea soup of a clarety brown.  The liver, the
+lung, the spleen are attacked to better purpose, without, however,
+getting beyond the state of a semi-fluid jam, which easily mixes
+with water and even appears to dissolve in it.  The brains do not
+liquefy either: they simply melt into a thin gruel.
+
+On the other hand, fatty substances, such as beef suet, lard and
+butter, do not undergo any appreciable change.  Moreover, the worms
+soon dwindle away, incapable of growing.  This sort of food does
+not suit them.  Why?  Apparently because it cannot be liquefied by
+the reagent disgorged by the worms.  In the same way, ordinary
+pepsin does not attack fatty substances; it takes pancreatin to
+reduce them to an emulsion.  This curious analogy of properties,
+positive for albuminous, negative for fatty matter, proclaims the
+similarity and perhaps the identity of the dissolvent discharged by
+the grubs and the pepsin of the higher animals.
+
+Here is another proof: the usual pepsin does not dissolve the
+epidermis, which is a material of a horny nature.  That of the
+maggots does not dissolve it either.  I can easily rear bluebottle
+grubs on dead crickets whose bellies I have first opened; but I do
+not succeed if the morsel be left intact: the worms are unable to
+perforate the succulent paunch; they are stopped by the cuticle, on
+which their reagent refuses to act.  Or else I give them frogs'
+hind legs, stripped of their skin.  The flesh turns to broth and
+disappears to the bone.  If I do not peel the legs, they remain
+intact in the midst of the vermin.  Their thin skin is sufficient
+to protect them.
+
+This failure to act upon the epidermis explains why the bluebottle
+at work on the animal declines to lay her eggs on the first part
+that comes handy.  She needs the delicate membrane of the nostrils,
+eyes or throat, or else some wound in which the flesh is laid bare.
+No other place suits her, however excellent for flavor and
+darkness.  At most, finding nothing better when my stratagems
+interfere, she persuades herself to dab a few eggs under the axilla
+of a plucked bird or in the groin, two points at which the skin is
+thinner than elsewhere.
+
+With her maternal foresight, the bluebottle knows to perfection the
+choice surfaces, the only ones liable to soften and run under the
+influence of the reagent dribbled by the newborn grubs.  The
+chemistry of the future is familiar to her, though she does not use
+it for her own feeding; motherhood, that great inspirer of
+instinct, teaches her all about it.
+
+Scrupulous though she be in choosing exactly where to lay her eggs,
+the bluebottle does not trouble about the quality of the provisions
+intended for her family's consumption.  Any dead body suits her
+purpose.  Redi, the Italian scientist who first exploded the old,
+foolish notion of worms begotten of corruption, fed the vermin in
+his laboratory with meat of very different kinds.  In order to make
+his tests the more conclusive, he exaggerated the largess of the
+dining hall.  The diet was varied with tiger and lion flesh, bear
+and leopard, fox and wolf, mutton and beef, horseflesh, donkey
+flesh and many others, supplied by the rich menagerie of Florence.
+This wastefulness was unnecessary: wolf and mutton are all the same
+to an unprejudiced stomach.
+
+A distant disciple of the maggot's biographer, I look at the
+problem in a light which Redi never dreamt of.  Any flesh of one of
+the higher animals suits the fly's family.  Will it be the same if
+the food supplied be of a lower organism and consist of fish, for
+instance, of frog, mollusk, insect, centipede?  Will the worms
+accept these viands and, above all, can they manage to liquefy
+them, which is the first and foremost condition?
+
+I serve a piece of raw whiting.  The flesh is white, delicate,
+partly translucent, easy for our stomachs to digest and no less
+suited to the grub's dissolvent.  It turns into an opalescent
+fluid, which runs like water.  In fact, it liquefies in much the
+same way as hard-boiled white of egg.  The worms at first wax fat,
+as long as the conditions allow of some solid eyots remaining;
+then, when foothold fails, threatened with drowning in the too
+fluid broth, they creep up the side of the glass, anxious and
+restless to be off.  They climb to the cotton-wool stopper of the
+test-tube and try to bolt through the wadding.  Endowed with
+stubborn perseverance, nearly all of them decamp in spite of the
+obstacle.  The test-tube with the white of egg showed me a similar
+exodus.  Although the fare suits them, as their growth witnesses,
+the worms cease feeding and make a point of escaping when death by
+drowning is imminent.
+
+With other fish, such as skate and sardines, with the flesh of
+frogs and tree frogs, the meat simply dissolves into a porridge.
+Hashes of slug, Scolopendra or praying mantis furnish the same
+result.
+
+In all these preparations, the dissolving agent of the worms is as
+much in evidence as when butcher's meat is employed.  Moreover, the
+grubs seem satisfied with the queer dish which my curiosity
+prescribes for them; they thrive amidst the victuals and undergo
+their transformation into pupae.
+
+The conclusion, therefore, is much more general than Redi imagined.
+Any meat, no matter whether of a higher or lower order, suits the
+bluebottle for the settlement of her family.  The carcasses of
+furred and feathered animals are the favorite victuals, probably
+because of their richness, which allows of plentiful layings; but,
+should the occasion demand it, the others are also accepted,
+without inconvenience.  Any carrion that has lived the life of an
+animal comes within the domain of these scavengers.
+
+What is their number to one mother?  I have already spoken of a
+deposit of three hundred, counted egg by egg.  A quite fortuitous
+circumstance enabled me to go much farther.  In the first week of
+January 1905, we experienced a sudden short cold snap of a severity
+very exceptional in my part of the country.  The thermometer fell
+to twelve degrees below zero.  While a fierce north wind was raging
+and beginning to redden the leaves of the olive trees, came one and
+brought me a barn or screech owl, which he had found on the ground,
+exposed to the air, not far from my house.  My reputation as a
+lover of animals made the donor believe that I should be pleased
+with his gift.
+
+I was, as a matter of fact, but for reasons whereof the finder
+certainly never dreamt.  The owl was untouched, with trim feathers
+and not the least wound that showed.  Perhaps he had died of cold.
+What made me gratefully accept the present was exactly that which
+would have inclined anyone but myself to refuse it.  The owl's
+eyes, glazed in death, were hidden under a thick mass of eggs,
+which I recognized as a bluebottle's.  Similar masses occupied the
+vicinity of the nostrils.  If I wanted maggots, here, of a
+certainty, was a richer crop than I had ever beheld.
+
+I place the corpse on the sand of a pan, with a wire gauze cover,
+and leave events to take their course.  The laboratory in which I
+install my bird is none other than my study.  It is as cold in
+there, or nearly, as outside, so much so that the water in the
+aquarium in which I used to rear caddis worms has frozen into a
+solid block of ice.  Under these conditions of temperature, the
+owl's eyes keep their white veil of germs unchanged.  Nothing
+stirs, nothing swarms.  Weary of waiting, I pay no more attention
+to the carcass; I leave the future to decide whether the cold has
+exterminated the fly's family or not.
+
+Before the end of March, the packets of eggs have disappeared, I
+know not how long.  The bird, for that matter, seems to be intact.
+On the ventral surface, which is turned to the air, the feathers
+keep their smooth arrangement and their fresh coloring.  I lift the
+thing.  It is light, very dry and gives a hard sound, like an old
+shoe tanned by the summer sun in the fields.  There is no smell.
+The dryness has vanquished the stench, which, in any case, was
+never offensive during that time of frost.  On the other hand, the
+back, which touched the sand, is a loathsome wreck, partly deprived
+of its feathers.  The quills of the tail are bare barreled; a few
+whitened bones show, deprived of their muscles.  The skin has
+turned into a dark leather, pierced with round holes like those of
+a sieve.  It is all hideously ugly, but most instructive.
+
+The wretched owl, with his shattered backbone, teaches us, first of
+all, that a temperature twelve degrees of frost does not endanger
+the existence of the bluebottle's germs.  The worms were born
+without accident, despite the rude blast; they feasted copiously on
+extract of meat; then, growing big and fat, they descended into the
+earth by piercing round holes in the bird's skin.  Their pupae must
+now be in the sand of the pan.
+
+They are, in point of fact, and in such numbers that I have to
+resort to sifting in order to collect them.  If I used the forceps,
+I should never have done sorting so great a quantity.  The sand
+passes through the meshes of the sieve, the pupae remain above.  To
+count them would wear out my patience.  I measure them by the
+bushel, that is to say, with a thimble of which I know the holding
+capacity in pupae.  The result of my calculation is not far short
+of nine hundred.
+
+Does this family proceed from one mother?  I am quite ready to
+admit it, so unlikely is it that the bluebottle, who is so rare
+inside our houses during the severe cold of winter, should be
+frequent enough outside to form into groups and to do business in
+common while an icy blast is raging.  A belated specimen, the
+plaything of the north wind, and one alone must have deposited the
+burden of her ovaries on the owl's eyes.  This laying of nine
+hundred eggs, an incomplete laying perhaps, bears witness to the
+mighty part played by the fly as a liquidator of corpses.
+
+Before throwing away the screech owl treated by the worms, let us
+overcome our repugnance and give a glance inside the bird.  We see
+a tortuous cavity, fenced in by nameless ruins.  Muscles and bowels
+have disappeared, converted into broth and gradually consumed by
+the teeming throng.  In every part, what was wet has become dry,
+what was solid muddy.  In vain my forceps ransacks every nook and
+corner: it does not hit upon a single pupa.  All the worms have
+emigrated, all, without exception.  From first to last, they have
+forsaken the refuge of the corpse, so soft to their delicate skins;
+they have left the velvet for the hard ground.  Is dryness
+necessary to them at this stage?  They had it in the carcass, which
+was thoroughly drained.  Would they protect themselves against the
+cold and rain?  No shelter could suit them better than the thick
+quilt of the feathers, which has remained wholly undamaged on the
+belly, the breast and every part that was not in touch with the
+ground.  It looks as though they had fled from comfort to seek a
+less kindly dwelling place.  When the hour of transformation came,
+all left the owl, that most excellent lodging; all dived into the
+sand.
+
+The exodus from the mortuary tabernacle was made through the round
+holes wherewith the skin is pierced.  Those holes are the worms'
+work: of that there is no doubt; and yet we have lately seen the
+mothers refuse as a bed for their eggs any part whereat the flesh
+is protected by a skin of some thickness.  The reason is the
+failure of the pepsin to act on epidermic substances.  In the
+absence of liquefaction at such points, the nourishing gruel is
+unprocurable.  On the other hand, the tiny worms are not able--or
+at least do not know how--to dig through the integument with their
+pair of guttural harpoons, to rend it and reach the liquefiable
+flesh.  The newborn lack strength and, above all, purpose.  But, as
+the time comes for descending into the earth, the worms, now
+powerful and suddenly versed in the necessary art, well know how to
+eat away patiently and clear themselves a passage.  With the hooks
+of their spikes they dig, scratch and tear.  Instinct has flashes
+of inspiration.  What the animal did not know how to do at the
+start it learns without apprenticeship when the time comes to
+practice this or that industry.  The maggot ripe for burial
+perforates a membranous obstacle which the grub intent upon its
+broth would not even have attempted to attack with either its
+pepsin or its grapnels.
+
+Why does the worm quit the carcass, that capital shelter?  Why does
+it go and take up its abode in the ground?  As the leading
+disinfector of dead things, it works at the most important matter,
+the suppression of the infection; but it leaves a plentiful
+residuum, which does not yield to the reagents of its analytical
+chemistry.  These remains have to disappear in their turn.  After
+the fly, anatomists come hastening, who take up the dry relic,
+nibble skin, tendons and ligaments and scrape the bones clean.
+
+The greatest expert in this work is the Dermestes beetle, an
+enthusiastic gnawer of animal remains.  Sooner or later, he will
+come to the joint already exploited by the fly.  Now what would
+happen if the pupae were there?  The answer is obvious.  The
+Dermestes, who loves hard food, would dig his teeth into the horny
+little kegs and demolish them at a bite.  Even though he did not
+touch the contents, a live thing which he probably dislikes, he
+would at least test the flavor of that lifeless substance, the
+container.  The future Fly would be lost, because her casing would
+be pierced.  Even so, in the storerooms of our silk mills, a
+certain Dermestes (Dermestes vulpinus, FABR.) digs into the cocoons
+to attack the horny covering of the chrysalis.
+
+The maggot foresees the danger and makes itself scarce before the
+other arrives.  In what sort of memory does it house so much
+wisdom, indigent, headless creature that it is, for it is only by
+extension that we can give the name of head to the animal's pointed
+fore part?  How did it learn that, to safeguard the pupa, it must
+desert the carcass and that, to safeguard the fly, it must not bury
+itself too far down?
+
+To emerge from underground after the perfect insect is hatched, the
+bluebottle's device consists in disjointing her head into two
+movable halves, which, each distended with its great red eye, by
+turns separate and reunite.  In the intervening space, a large,
+glassy hernia rises and disappears, disappears and rises.  When the
+two move asunder, with one eye forced back to the right, the other
+to the left, it is as though the insect were splitting its brain
+pan in order to expel the contents.  Then the hernia rises, blunt
+at the end and swollen into a great knob.  Next, the forehead
+closes and the hernia retreats, leaving visible only a kind of
+shapeless muzzle.  In short, a frontal pouch, with deep pulsations
+momentarily renewed, becomes the instrument of deliverance, the
+pestle wherewith the newly hatched bluebottle bruises the sand and
+causes it to crumble.  Gradually the legs push the rubbish back and
+the insect advances so much toward the surface.
+
+A hard task, this exhumation by dint of the blows of a cleft and
+palpitating head.  Moreover, the exhausting effort has to be made
+at the moment of greatest weakness, when the insect leaves that
+protecting casket, its pupa.  It emerges from it pale, flabby and
+unsightly, sorrily clad in the wings which, folded lengthwise and
+made shorter by their scalloped edge, only just cover the top of
+the back.  Wildly bristling with hairs and colored ashen-gray, it
+is a piteous sight.  The large set of wings, suitable for flight,
+will spread later.  For the moment, it would only be in the way
+amid the obstacles to be passed through.  Later also will come the
+faultless dress wherein the iridescent indigo-blue stands out
+against the severity of the black.
+
+The frontal hernia that crumbles the sand with its impact has a
+tendency to make play for some time after the emergence from the
+ground.  Take hold with the forceps of one of the hind legs of a
+newly released fly.  Forthwith, the implement of the head begins to
+work, swelling and subsiding as energetically as a moment ago, when
+it had to make a hole in the sand.  The insect, hampered in its
+movements as when it was underground, struggles as best it can
+against the only obstacle that it knows.  With its heaving knob, it
+pounds the air even as but now it pounded the earthy barrier.  In
+all unpleasant circumstances, its one resource is to cleave its
+head and produce its cranial hernia, which moves out and in, in and
+out.  For nearly two hours, interspersed with halts due to fatigue,
+the little machine keeps throbbing in my forceps.
+
+In the meantime, however, the desperate one is hardening her skin;
+she spreads wide the sail of her wings and dons her deep mourning
+of black and darkest blue.  Then her eyes, warped sideways, come
+together and resume their normal position.  The cleft forehead
+closes; the delivering blister goes in, never to show itself again.
+But there is one precaution to be taken first.  With its front
+tarsi, the insect carefully brushes the bump about to disappear
+from view, lest grit should lodge in the cranium when the two
+halves of the head are joined for good.
+
+The maggot is aware of the trials that await it when, as a fly, it
+will have to come up from under ground; it knows beforehand how
+difficult the ascent will be with the feeble instrument at its
+disposal, so difficult, in fact, as to become fatal should the
+journey be at all prolonged.  It foresees the dangers ahead of it
+and averts them as well as it can.  Gifted with two iron shod
+sticks in its throat, it can easily descend to such depths as it
+pleases.  The need for greater quiet and a less trying temperature
+calls for the deepest possible home: the lower down it is, the
+better for the welfare of the worm and the pupa, on condition that
+descent be practicable.  It is, perfectly; and yet, though free to
+obey its inspiration, the grub refrains.  I rear it in a deep pan,
+full of fine, dry sand, easy to excavate.  The interment never goes
+very far.  About a hand's breadth is all that the most progressive
+digger ventures upon.  Most of the interred remain nearer still to
+the surface.  Here, under a thin layer of sand, the grub's skin
+hardens and becomes a coffin, a casket, wherein the transformation
+sleep is slept.  A few weeks later, the buried one awakes,
+transfigured but weak, having naught wherewith to unearth herself
+but the throbbing hernia of her open forehead.
+
+What the maggot denies itself it is open to me to realize, should I
+care to know the depth whence the fly is able to mount.  I place
+fifteen bluebottle pupae, obtained in winter, at the bottom of a
+wide tube closed at one end.  Above the pupae is a perpendicular
+column of fine, dry sand, the height of which varies in different
+tubes.  April comes and the hatching begins.
+
+A tube with six centimeters of sand, the shallowest of the columns
+under experiment, yields the best result.  Of the fifteen subjects
+interred in the pupa stage, fourteen easily reach the surface when
+they become flies.  Only one of them perishes, one who has not even
+attempted the ascent.  With twelve centimeters of sand, four
+emerge.  With twenty centimeters, two, no more.  The other flies,
+jaded with their exertions, have died at a higher or lower stage of
+the road.  Lastly, with yet another tube wherein the column of sand
+measured sixty centimeters, I obtained the liberation of only a
+single fly.  The plucky creature must have had a hard struggle to
+mount from so great a depth, for the other fourteen did not even
+manage to burst the lid of their caskets.
+
+I presume that the looseness of the sand and the consequent
+pressure in every direction, similar to that exercised by fluids,
+have a certain bearing on the difficulties of the exhumation.  Two
+more tubes are prepared, but this time supplied with fresh mould,
+lightly heaped up, which has not the incoherence of sand, with the
+attendant drawback of pressure.  Six centimeters of mould give me
+eight flies for fifteen pupae buried; twenty centimeters give me
+only one.  There is less success than with the sandy column.  My
+device has diminished the pressure, but, at the same time,
+increased the passive resistance.  The sand falls of itself under
+the impact of the frontal rammer; the unyielding mould demands the
+cutting of a gallery.  In fact, I perceive, on the road followed, a
+shaft which continues indefinitely such as it is.  The fly has
+bored it with the temporary blister that throbs between her eyes.
+
+In every medium, therefore, whether sand, mould or any earthy
+combination, great are the sufferings that attend the exhumation of
+the fly.  And so the maggot shuns the depths which a desire for
+additional security might seem to recommend.  The worm has its own
+prudence: foreseeing the dangers ahead, it refrains from making
+great descents that might promote the welfare of the moment.  It
+neglects the present for the sake of the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI  A PARASITE OF THE MAGGOT
+
+The dangers of the exhumation are not the only ones; the Bluebottle
+must be acquainted with others.  Life, when all is said, is a
+knacker's yard wherein the devourer of today becomes the devoured
+of tomorrow; and the robber of the dead cannot fail to be robbed of
+her own life when the time comes.  I know that she has one
+exterminator in the person of the tiny Saprinus beetle, a fisher of
+fat sausages on the edge of the pools formed by liquescent corpses.
+Here swarm in common the grubs of the greenbottle, the flesh fly
+and the bluebottle.  The Saprinus draws them to him from the bank
+and gobbles them indiscriminately.  They represent to him morsels
+of equal value.
+
+This banquet can be observed only in the open country, under the
+rays of a hot sun.  Saprini and greenbottles never enter our
+houses; the flesh fly visits us but discreetly, does not feel at
+home with us; the only one who comes fussing along is the
+bluebottle, who thus escapes the tribute due to the consumer of
+plump sausages.  But, in the fields, where she readily lays her
+eggs upon any carcass that she finds, she, as well as the others,
+sees her vermin swept away by the gluttonous Saprinus.
+
+In addition, graver disasters decimate her family, if, as I do not
+doubt, we can apply to the bluebottle what I have seen happen in
+the case of her rival, the flesh fly.  So far, I have had no
+opportunity of actually perceiving with the first what I have to
+tell of the second; still, I do not hesitate to repeat about the
+one what observation has taught me about the other, for the larval
+analogies between the two flies are very close.
+
+Here are the facts.  I have gathered a number of pupae of the flesh
+fly in one of my vermin jars.  Wishing to examine the pupa's hinder
+end, which is hollowed into a cup and scalloped into a coronet, I
+stave in one of the little barrels and force open the last segments
+with the point of my pocketknife.  The horny keg does not contain
+what I expected to find: it is full of tiny grubs packed one atop
+the other with the same economy of space as anchovies in a bottle.
+Save for the skin, which has hardened into a brown shell, the
+substance of the maggot has disappeared, changed into a restless
+swarm.
+
+There are thirty-five occupants.  I replace them in their casket.
+The rest of my harvest, wherein, no doubt, are other pupae
+similarly stocked, is arranged in tubes that will easily show me
+what happens.  The thing to discover is what genus of parasites the
+grubs enclosed belong to.  But it is not difficult, without waiting
+for the hatching of the adults, to recognize their nature merely by
+their mode of life.  They form part of the family of Chalcididae,
+who are microscopic ravagers of living entrails.
+
+Not long ago, in winter, I took from the chrysalis of a great
+peacock moth four hundred and forty-nine parasites belonging to the
+same group.  The whole substance of the future moth had
+disappeared, all but the nymphal wrapper, which was intact and
+formed a handsome Russia-leather wallet.  The worm grubs were here
+heaped up and squeezed together to the point of sticking to one
+another.  The hair pencil extracts them in bundles and cannot
+separate them without some difficulty.  The holding capacity is
+strained to the utmost; the substance of the vanished Moth would
+not fill it better.  That which died has been replaced by a living
+mass of equal dimensions, but subdivided.  The price of this
+colony's existence is the conversion of the chrysalis into a sort
+of milk food of doubtful constitution.  The enormous udder has been
+drained outright.
+
+You shudder when you think of that budding flesh nibbled bit by bit
+by four or five hundred gormandizers; the horrified imagination
+refuses to picture the anguish suffered by the tortured wretch.
+But is there really any pain?  We have leave to doubt it.  Pain is
+a patent of nobility; it is more pronounced in proportion as the
+sufferer belongs to a higher order.  In the lower ranks of animal
+life, it must be greatly reduced, perhaps even nil, especially when
+life, in the throes of evolution, has not yet acquired a stable
+equilibrium.  The white of an egg is living matter, but endures the
+prick of a needle without a quiver.  Would it not be the same with
+the chrysalis of the great peacock, dissected cell by cell by
+hundreds of infinitesimal anatomists?  Would it not be the same
+with the pupa of the flesh fly?  These are organisms put back into
+the crucible, reverting to the egg state for a second birth.  There
+is reason to believe, therefore, that their destruction crumb by
+crumb is merciful.
+
+Towards the end of August, the parasite of the flesh fly's grubs
+makes her appearance out of doors in the adult form.  She is a
+Chalcidid, as I expected.  She issues from the barrel through one
+or two little round holes which the prisoners have pierced with a
+patient tooth.  I count some thirty to each pupa.  There would not
+be enough room in the abode if the family were larger.
+
+The imp is a slim and elegant creature, but oh, how small! She
+measures hardly two millimeters.  Her garb is bronzed black, with
+pale legs and a heart shaped, pointed, slightly pedunculate
+abdomen, with never a trace of a probe for inoculating the eggs.
+The head is transversal, the width exceeding the length.
+
+The male is only half the size of the female; he is also very much
+less numerous.  Perhaps pairing is here, as we see elsewhere, a
+secondary matter from which it is possible to abstain, in part,
+without injuring the prospects of the race.  Nevertheless, in the
+tube wherein I have housed the swarm, the few males lost among the
+crowd ardently woo the passing fair.  There is much to be done
+outside, as long as the flesh fly's season lasts; things are
+urgent; and each pigmy hurries as fast as she can to take up her
+part as an exterminator.
+
+How is the parasite's inroad into the flesh fly's pupae effected?
+Truth is always veiled in a certain mystery.  The good fortune that
+secured me the ravaged pupa taught me nothing concerning the
+tactics of the ravager.  I have never seen the Chalcidid explore
+the contents of my appliances; my attention was engaged elsewhere
+and nothing is so difficult to see as a thing not yet suspected.
+But, though direct observation be lacking, logic will tell us
+approximately what we want to know.
+
+It is evident, to begin with, that the invasion cannot have been
+made through the sturdy amour of the pupae.  This is too hard to be
+penetrated by the means at the pigmy's disposal.  Naught but the
+delicate skin of the maggots lends itself to the introduction of
+the germs.  An egg laying mother, therefore, appears, inspects the
+surface of the pool of sanies swarming with grubs, selects the one
+that suits her and perches on it; then, with the tip of her pointed
+abdomen, whence emerges, for an instant, a short probe kept hidden
+until then, she operates on the patient, perforating his paunch
+with a dexterous wound into which the germs are inserted.
+Probably, a number of pricks are administered, as the presence of
+thirty parasites seems to demand.
+
+Anyway, the maggot's skin is pierced at either one point or many;
+and this happens while the grub is swimming in the pools formed by
+the putrid flesh.  Having said this, we are faced with a question
+of serious interest.  To set it forth necessitates a digression
+which seems to have nothing to do with the subject in hand and is
+nevertheless connected with it in the closest fashion.  Without
+certain preliminaries, the remainder would be unintelligible.  So
+now for the preliminaries.
+
+I was in those days busy with the poison of the Languedocian
+scorpion and its action upon insects.  To direct the sting toward
+this or the other part of the victim and moreover to regulate its
+emission would be absolutely impossible and also very dangerous, as
+long as the scorpions were allowed to act as they pleased.  I
+wished to be able myself to choose the part to be wounded; I
+likewise wished to vary the dose of poison at will.  How to set
+about it?  The scorpion has no jarlike receptacle in which the
+venom is accumulated and stored, like that possessed, for instance,
+by the wasp and the bee.  The last segment of the tail, gourd
+shaped and surmounted by the sting, contains only a powerful mass
+of muscles along which lie the delicate vessels that secrete the
+poison.
+
+In default of a poison jar which I would have placed on one side
+and drawn upon at my convenience, I detach the last segment,
+forming the base of the sting.  I obtain it from a dead and already
+withered scorpion.  A watch glass serves as a basin.  Here, I tear
+and crush the piece in a few drops of water and leave it to steep
+for four-and-twenty hours.  The result is the liquid which I
+propose to use for the inoculation.  If any poison remained in my
+animal's caudal gourd, there must be at least some traces of it in
+the infusion in the watch glass.
+
+My hypodermic syringe is of the simplest.  It consists of a little
+glass tube, tapering sharply at one end.  By drawing in my breath,
+I fill it with the liquid to be tested; I expel the contents by
+blowing.  Its point is almost as fine as a hair and enables me to
+regulate the dose to the degree which I want.  A cubic millimeter
+is the usual charge.  The injection has to be made at parts that
+are generally covered with horn.  So as not to break the point of
+my fragile instrument, I prepare the way with a needle, with which
+I prick the victim at the spot required.  I insert the tip of the
+loaded injector in the hole thus made and I blow.  The thing is
+done in a moment, very neatly and in an orthodox fashion, favorable
+to delicate experiments.  I am delighted with my modest apparatus.
+
+I am equally delighted with the results.  The scorpion himself,
+when wounding with his sting, in which the poison is not diluted as
+mine is in the watch glass, would not produce effects like those of
+my pricks.  Here is something more brutal, producing more
+convulsion in the sufferer.  The virus of my contriving excels the
+scorpion's.
+
+The test is several times repeated, always with the same mixture,
+which, drying up by spontaneous evaporation, then made to serve
+again by the addition of a few drops of water, once more drained
+and once more moistened, does duty for an indefinite length of
+time.  Instead of abating, the virulence increases.  Moreover, the
+corpses of the insects operated upon undergo a curious change,
+unknown in my earlier observations.  Then the suspicion comes to me
+that the actual poison of the scorpion does not enter into the
+matter at all.  What I obtain with the end joint of the tail, with
+the gland at the base of the sting, I ought to obtain with any
+other part of the animal.
+
+I crush in a few drops of water a joint of the tail taken from the
+front portion, far from the poison glands.  After soaking it for
+twenty-four hours, I obtain a liquid whose effects are absolutely
+the same as those before, when I used the joint that bears the
+sting.  I try again with the scorpion's claws, the contents of
+which consist solely of muscle.  The results are just the same.
+The whole of the animal's body, therefore, no matter which fragment
+be submitted to the steeping process, yields the virus that so
+greatly pricks my curiosity.
+
+Every part of the Spanish fly [Cantharis or blistering beetle],
+inside and out, is saturated with the blistering element; but there
+is nothing like this in the scorpion, who localizes his venom in
+his caudal gland and has none of it elsewhere.  The cause of the
+effects which I observe is therefore connected with general
+properties which I ought to find in any insect, even the most
+harmless.
+
+I consult Oryctes nasicornis, the peaceable rhinoceros beetle, on
+this subject.  To get at the exact nature of the materials, instead
+of pulverizing the whole insect in a mortar, I use merely the
+muscular tissue obtained by scraping the inside of the dried
+Oryctes' corselet.  Or else I extract the dry contents of the hind
+legs.  I do the same with the desiccated corpses of the cockchafer,
+the Capricorn, or Cerambyx beetle, and the Cetonia, or rosechafer.
+Each of my gleanings, with a little water added, is left to soften
+for a couple of days in a watch glass and yields to the liquid
+whatever can be extracted from it by crushing and dissolving.
+
+This time, we take a great step forward.  All my preparations,
+without distinction, are horribly virulent.  Let the reader judge.
+I select as my first patient the sacred beetle, Scarabaeus sacer,
+who thanks to his size and sturdiness, lends himself admirably to
+an experiment of this kind.  I operate upon a dozen, in the
+corselet, on the breast, on the belly and, by preference, on one of
+the hind legs, far removed from the impressionable nervous centers.
+No matter what part my injector attacks, the effect produced is the
+same, or nearly.  The insect falls as though struck by lightning.
+It lies on its back and wriggles its legs, especially the hind
+legs.  If I set it on its feet again, I behold a sort of St.
+Vitus' dance.  Scarabaeus lowers his head, arches his back, draws
+himself up on his twitching legs.  He marks time with his feet on
+the ground, moves forward a little, moves as much backward, leans
+to the right, leans to the left, in wild disorder, incapable of
+keeping his balance or making progress.  And this happens with
+sudden jerks and jolts, with a vigor no whit inferior to that of
+the animal in perfect health.  It is a displacement of all the
+works, a storm that uproots the mutual relations of the muscles.
+
+Seldom have I witnessed such sufferings, in my career as a cross-
+examiner of animals and, therefore, as a torturer.  I should feel a
+scruple, did I not foresee that the grain of sand shifted today may
+one day help us by taking its place in the edifice of knowledge.
+Life is everywhere the same, in the Dung beetle's body as in man's.
+To consult it in the insect means consulting it in ourselves, means
+moving towards vistas which we cannot afford to neglect.  That hope
+justifies my cruel studies, which, though apparently so puerile,
+are in reality worthy of serious consideration.
+
+Of my dozen sufferers, some rapidly succumb, others linger for a
+few hours.  They are all dead by tomorrow.  I leave the corpses on
+the table, exposed to the air.  Instead of drying and stiffening,
+like the asphyxiated insects intended for our collections, my
+patients, on the contrary, turn soft and slacken in the joints,
+notwithstanding the dryness of the surrounding air; they become
+disjointed and separate into loose pieces, which are easily
+removed.
+
+The results are the same with the Capricorn, the cockchafer, the
+Procrustes [a large ground beetle], the Carabus [the true ground
+beetle, including the gold beetle].  In all of them there is a
+sudden break-up, followed by speedy death, a slackening of the
+joints and swift putrefaction.  In a non-horny victim, the quick
+chemical changes of the tissues are even more striking.  A Cetonia
+grub, which resists the scorpion's sting, even though repeatedly
+administered, dies in a very short time if I inject a tiny drop of
+my terrible fluid into any part of its body.  Moreover, it turns
+very brown and, in a couple of days, becomes a mass of black
+putrescence.
+
+The great peacock, that large moth who recks little of the
+scorpion's poison, is no more able to resist my inoculations than
+the sacred beetle and the others.  I prick two in the belly, a male
+and a female.  At first, they seem to bear the operation without
+distress.  They grip the trellis work of the cage and hang without
+moving, as though indifferent.  But soon the disease has them in
+its grip.  What we see is not the tumultuous ending of the sacred
+beetle; it is the calm advent of death.  With wings slackly
+quivering, softly they die and drop from the wires.  Next day, both
+corpses are remarkably lax; the segments of the abdomen separate
+and gape at the least touch.  Remove the hairs and you shall see
+that the skin, which was white, has turned brown and is changing to
+black.  Corruption is quickly doing its work.
+
+This would be a good opportunity to speak of bacteria and cultures.
+I shall do nothing of the sort.  On the hazy borderland of the
+visible and the invisible, the microscope inspires me with
+suspicion.  It so easily replaces the eye of reality by the eye of
+imagination; it is so ready to oblige the theorists with just what
+they want to see.  Besides, supposing the microbe to be found, if
+that were possible, the question would be changed, not solved.  For
+the problem of the collapse of the structure through the fact of a
+prick there would be substituted another no less obscure: how does
+the said microbe bring about that collapse?  In what way does it go
+to work?  Where lies its power?
+
+Then what explanation shall I give of the facts which I have just
+set forth?  Why, none, absolutely none, seeing that I do not know
+of any.  As I am unable to do better, I will confine myself to a
+pair of comparisons or images, which may serve as a brief resting
+place for the mind on the dark billows of the unknown.
+
+All of us, as children, have amused ourselves with the game of
+"card friars." A number of cards, as many as possible, are bent
+lengthwise into a semi-cylinder.  They are placed on a table, one
+behind the other, in a winding row, the spaces in which are
+suitably disposed.  The performance pleases the eye by its curved
+lines and its regular arrangement.  It possesses order, which is a
+condition of all animated matter.  You give a little tap to the
+first card.  It falls and overturns the second, which, in the same
+way, topsy-turvies the third; and so on, right to the end of the
+row.  In less than no time, the capsizing wave spreads and the
+handsome edifice is shattered.  Order is succeeded by disorder, I
+might almost say, by death.  What was needed thus to upset the
+procession of friars?  A very, very slight first push, out of all
+proportion to the toppled mass.
+
+Again, take a glass balloon containing a solution of alum
+supersaturated by heat.  It is closed, during the process of
+boiling, with a cork and is then allowed to cool.  The contents
+remain fluid and limpid for an indefinite period.  Mobility is here
+represented by a faint semblance of life.  Remove the cork and drop
+in a solid particle of alum, however infinitesimal.  Suddenly, the
+liquid thickens into a solid lump and gives off heat.  What has
+happened?  This: crystallization has set in at the first contact of
+the particle of alum, the center of attraction; next, it has spread
+bit by bit, each solidified particle producing the solidification
+of those around.  The impulse comes from an atom; the mass impelled
+is boundless.  The very small has revolutionized the immense.
+
+Of course, in the comparison between these two instances and the
+effects of my injections, the reader must see no more than a figure
+of speech, which, without explaining anything, tries to throw a
+glimmer of light upon it.  The long procession of card friars is
+knocked down by the mere touch of the little finger to the first;
+the voluminous solution of alum suddenly turns solid under the
+influence of an invisible particle.  In the same way, the victims
+of my operations succumb, thrown into convulsions by a tiny drop of
+insignificant size and harmless appearance.
+
+Then what is there in that terrible liquid?  First of all, there is
+water, inactive in itself and simply a vehicle of the active agent.
+If a proof were needed of its innocuousness, here is one: I inject
+into the thigh of any one of the sacred beetle's six legs a drop of
+pure water larger than that of the fatal inoculations.  As soon as
+he is released, he makes off and trots about as nimbly as usual.
+He is quite firm on his legs.  When put back to his pellet, he
+rolls it with the same zeal as before the experiment.  My injection
+of water makes no difference to him.
+
+What else is there in the mixture in my watch glasses?  There is
+the disintegrated matter of the corpse, especially shreds of dried
+muscles.  Do these substances yield certain soluble elements to
+water?  Or are they simply reduced to a fine dust in the crushing?
+I will not decide this question, nor is it really of importance.
+The fact remains that the poison proceeds from those substances and
+from them alone.  Animal matter, therefore, which has ceased to
+live is an agent of destruction within the organism.  The dead cell
+kills the living cell; in the delicate statics of life, it is the
+grain of sand which, refusing its support, entails the collapse of
+the whole edifice.
+
+In this connection, we may recall those dreadful dissecting room
+accidents.  Through awkwardness, a student of anatomy pricks
+himself with his scalpel in the course of his work; or else, by
+inadvertence, he has an insignificant scratch on his hand.  A cut
+which one would hardly notice, produced by the point of a pocket
+knife, a scratch of no account, from a thorn or otherwise, now
+becomes a mortal wound, if powerful antiseptics do not speedily
+remedy the ill.  The scalpel is soiled by its contact with the
+flesh of the corpse; so are the hands.  That is quite enough.  The
+virus of corruption is introduced; and, if not treated in time, the
+wound proves fatal.  The dead has killed the living.  This also
+reminds us of the so-called carbuncle flies, the lancet of whose
+mouth parts, contaminated with the sanies of corpses, produces such
+terrible accidents.
+
+My dealings as against insects are, when all is said, nothing but
+dissecting room wounds and carbuncle flies' stings.  In addition to
+the gangrene that soon impairs and blackens the tissues, I obtain
+convulsions similar to those produced by the scorpion's sting.  In
+its convulsive effects, the venomous fluid emitted by the sting
+bears a close resemblance to the muscular infusions with which I
+fill my injector.  We are entitled, therefore, to ask ourselves if
+poisons, generally speaking, are not themselves a produce of
+demolition, a casting of the organism perpetually renewed, waste
+matter, in short, which, instead of being gradually expelled, is
+stored for purposes of attack and defense.  The animal, in that
+case, would arm itself with its own refuse in the same way as it
+sometimes builds itself a home with its intestinal recrement.
+Nothing is wasted; life's detritus is used for self defense.
+
+All things considered, my preparations are meat extracts.  If I
+replace the flesh of the insect by that of another animal, the ox,
+for instance, shall I obtain the same results?  Logic says yes; and
+logic is right.  I dilute with a few drops of water a little
+Liebig's extract, that precious standby of the kitchen.  I operate
+with this fluid on six Cetoniae or rosechafers, four in the grub
+stage, two in the adult stage.  At first, the patients move about
+as usual.  Next day, the two Cetoniae are dead.  The larvae resist
+longer and do not die until the second day.  All show the same
+relaxed muscles, the same blackened flesh, signs of putrefaction.
+It is probable, therefore, that, if injected into our own veins,
+the same fluid would likewise prove fatal.  What is excellent in
+the digestive tubes would be appalling in the arteries.  What is
+food in one case is poison in the other.
+
+A Liebig's extract of a different kind, the broth in which the
+liquefier puddles, is of a virulence equal, if not superior, to
+that of my products.  All those operated upon, Capricorns, sacred
+beetles, ground beetles, die in convulsions.  This brings us back,
+after a long way round, to our starting point, the maggot of the
+flesh fly.  Can the worm, constantly floundering in the sanies of a
+carcass, be itself in danger of inoculation by that whereon it
+grows fat?  I dare not rely upon experiments conducted by myself:
+my clumsy implements and my shaky hand make me fear that, with
+subjects so small and delicate, I might inflict deep wounds which
+of themselves would bring about death.
+
+Fortunately, I have a collaborator of incomparable skill in the
+parasitic Chalcidid.  Let us apply to her.  To introduce her germs,
+she has perforated the maggot's paunch, has even done so several
+times over.  The holes are extremely small, but the poison all
+around is excessively subtle and has thus been able, in certain
+cases, to penetrate.  Now what has happened?  The pupae, all from
+the same apparatus, are numerous.  They can be divided into three
+not very unequal classes, according to the results supplied.  Some
+give me the adult flesh fly, others the parasite.  The rest, nearly
+a third, give me nothing, neither this year nor next.
+
+In the first two cases, things have taken their normal course: the
+grub has developed into a fly, or else the parasite has devoured
+the grub.  In the third case, an accident has occurred.  I open the
+barren pupae.  They are coated inside with a dark glaze, the
+remains of the dead maggot converted into black rottenness.  The
+grub, therefore, has undergone inoculation by the virus through the
+fine openings effected by the Chalcidid.  The skin has had time to
+harden into a shell; but it was too late, the tissues being already
+infected.
+
+There you see it: in its broth of putrefaction, the worm is exposed
+to grave dangers.  Now there is a need for maggots in this world,
+for maggots many and voracious, to purge the soil as quickly as
+possible of death's impurities.  Linnaeus tells us that 'Tres
+muscae consumunt cadaver equi aeque cito ac leo." [Three flies
+consume the carcass of a horse as quickly as a lion could do it.]
+There is no exaggeration about the statement.  Yes, of a certainty,
+the offspring of the flesh fly and the bluebottle are expeditious
+workers.  They swarm in a heap, always seeking, always snuffling
+with their pointed mouths.  In those tumultuous crowds, mutual
+scratches would be inevitable if the worms, like the other flesh
+eaters, possessed mandibles, jaws, clippers adapted for cutting,
+tearing and chopping; and those scratches, poisoned by the dreadful
+gruel lapping them, would all be fatal.
+
+How are the worms protected in their horrible work yard?  They do
+not eat: they drink their fill; by means of a pepsin which they
+disgorge, they first turn their foodstuffs into soup; they practice
+a strange and exceptional art of feeding, wherein those dangerous
+carving implements, the scalpels with their dissecting room perils,
+are superfluous.  Here ends, for the present, the little that I
+know or suspect of the maggot, the sanitary inspector in the
+service of the public health.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII  RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD
+
+Almost as much as insects and birds--the former so dear to the
+child, who loves to rear his cockchafers and rose beetles on a bed
+of hawthorn in a box pierced with holes; the latter an irresistible
+temptation, with their nests and their eggs and their little ones
+opening tiny yellow beaks--the mushroom early won my heart with its
+varied shapes and colors.  I can still see myself as an innocent
+small boy sporting my first braces and beginning to know my way
+through the cabalistic mazes of my reading book, I see myself in
+ecstasy before the first bird's nest found and the first mushroom
+gathered.  Let us relate these grave events.  Old age loves to
+meditate the past.
+
+O happy days when curiosity awakens and frees us from the limbo of
+unconsciousness, your distant memory makes me live my best years
+over again.  Disturbed at its siesta by some wayfarer, the
+partridge's young brood hastily disperses.  Each pretty little ball
+of down scurries off and disappears in the brushwood; but, when
+quiet is restored, at the first summoning note they all return
+under the mother's wing.  Even so, recalled by memory, do my
+recollections of childhood return, those other fledglings which
+have lost so many of their feathers on the brambles of life.  Some,
+which have hardly come out of the bushes, have aching heads and
+tottering steps; some are missing, stifled in some dark corner of
+the thicket; some remain in their full freshness.  Now of those
+which have escaped the clutches of time the liveliest are the
+first-born.  For them the soft wax of childish memory has been
+converted into enduring bronze.
+
+On that day, wealthy and leisured, with an apple for my lunch and
+all my time to myself, I decided to visit the brow of the
+neighboring hill, hitherto looked upon as the boundary of the
+world.  Right at the top is a row of trees which, turning their
+backs to the wind, bend and toss about as though to uproot
+themselves and take to flight.  How often, from the little window
+in my home, have I not seen them bowing their heads in stormy
+weather; how often have I not watched them writhing like madmen
+amid the snow dust which the north wind's broom raises and smoothes
+along the hillside! 'What are they doing up there, those desolate
+trees?  I am interested in their supple backs, today still and
+upright against the blue of the sky, tomorrow shaken when the
+clouds pass overhead.  I am gladdened by their calmness; I am
+distressed by their terrified gestures.  They are my friends.  I
+have them before my eyes at every hour of the day.  In the morning,
+the sun rises behind their transparent screen and ascends in its
+glory.  Where does it come from?  I am going to climb up there and
+perhaps I shall find out.
+
+I mount the slope.  It is a lean grass sward close-cropped by the
+sheep.  It has no bushes, fertile in rents and tears, for which I
+should have to answer on returning home, nor any rocks, the scaling
+of which involves like dangers; nothing but large, flat stones,
+scattered here and there.  I.  have only to go straight on, over
+smooth ground.  But the sward is as steep as a sloping roof.  It is
+long, ever so long; and my legs are very short.  From time to time,
+I look up.  My friends, the trees on the hilltop, seem to be no
+nearer.  Cheerily, sonny! Scramble away!
+
+What is this at my feet?  A lovely bird has flown from its hiding
+place under the eaves of a big stone.  Bless us, here's a nest made
+of hair and fine straw! It's the first I have ever found, the first
+of the joys which the birds are to bring me.  And in this nest are
+six eggs, laid prettily side by side; and those eggs are a
+magnificent blue, as though steeped in a dye of celestial azure.
+Overpowered with happiness, I lie down on the grass and stare.
+
+Meanwhile, the mother, with a little clap of her gullet--'Tack!
+Tack !'--flies anxiously from stone to stone, not far from the
+intruder.  My age knows no pity, is still too barbarous to
+understand maternal anguish.  A plan is running in my head, a plan
+worthy of a little beast of prey.  I will come back in a fortnight
+and collect the nestlings before they can fly away.  In the
+meantime, I will just take one of those pretty blue eggs, only one,
+as a trophy.  Lest it should be crushed, I place the fragile thing
+on a little moss in the scoop of my hand.  Let him cast a stone at
+me that has not, in his childhood, known the rapture of finding his
+first nest.
+
+My delicate burden, which would be ruined by a false step, makes me
+give up the remainder of the climb.  Some other day I shall see the
+trees on the hilltop over which the sun rises.  I go down the slope
+again.  At the bottom, I meet the parish priest's curate reading
+his breviary as he takes his walk.  He sees me coming solemnly
+along, like a relic bearer; he catches sight of my hand hiding
+something behind my back: 'What have you there, my boy? ' he asks.
+
+All abashed, I open my hand and show my blue egg on its bed of
+moss.
+
+'Ah!' says his reverence.  'A Saxicola's egg! Where did you get it?
+'
+
+'Up there, father, under a stone.'
+
+Question follows question; and my peccadillo stands confessed.  By
+chance I found a nest which I was not looking for.  There were six
+eggs in it.  I took one of them--here it is--and I am waiting for
+the rest to hatch.  I shall go back for the others when the young
+birds have their quill feathers.
+
+'You mustn't do that, my little friend,' replies the priest.  'You
+mustn't rob the mother of her brood; you must respect the innocent
+little ones; you must let God's birds grow up and fly from the
+nest.  They are the joy of the fields and they clear the earth of
+its vermin.  Be a good boy, now, and don't touch the nest.'
+
+I promise and the curate continues his walk.  I come home with two
+good seeds cast on the fallows of my childish brain.  An
+authoritative word has taught me that spoiling birds' nests is a
+bad action.  I did not quite understand how the bird comes to our
+aid by destroying vermin, the scourge of the crops; but I felt, at
+the bottom of my heart, that it is wrong to afflict the mothers.
+
+'Saxicola,' the priest had said, on seeing my find.
+
+'Hullo!' said I to myself.  'Animals have names, just like
+ourselves.  Who named them?  What are all my different
+acquaintances in the woods and meadows called?  What does Saxicola
+mean? '
+
+Years passed and Latin taught me that Saxicola means an inhabitant
+of the rocks.  My bird, in fact, was flying from one rocky point to
+the other while I lay in ecstasy before its eggs; its house, its
+nest, had the rim of a large stone for a roof.  Further knowledge
+gleaned from books taught me that the lover of stony hillsides is
+also called the Motteux, or clodhopper, because, in the plowing
+season, she flies from clod to clod, inspecting the furrows rich in
+unearthed grubworms.  Lastly, I came upon the Provencal expression
+Cul-blanc, which is also a picturesque term, suggesting the patch
+on the bird's rump which spreads out like a white butterfly
+flitting over the fields.
+
+Thus did the vocabulary come into being that would one day allow me
+to greet by their real names the thousand actors on the stage of
+the fields, the thousand little flowers that smile at us from the
+wayside.  The word which the curate had spoken without attaching
+the least importance to it revealed a world to me, the world of
+plants and animals designated by their real names.  To the future
+must belong the task of deciphering some pages of the immense
+lexicon; for today I will content myself with remembering the
+Saxicola, or stonechat.
+
+On the west, my village crumbles into an avalanche of garden
+patches, in which plums and apples ripen.  Low bulging walls,
+blackened with the stains of lichens and mosses, support the
+terraces.  The brook runs at the foot of the slope.  It can be
+cleared almost everywhere at a bound.  In the wider parts, flat
+stones standing out of the water serve as a foot bridge.  There is
+no such thing as a whirlpool, the terror of mothers when the
+children are away; it is nowhere more than knee deep.  Dear little
+brook, so tranquil, cool and clear, I have seen majestic rivers
+since, I have seen the boundless sea; but nothing in my memories
+equals your modest falls.  About you clings all the hallowed
+pleasure of my first impressions.
+
+A miller has bethought him of putting the brook, which used to flow
+so gaily through the fields, to work.  Halfway up the slope, a
+watercourse, economizing the gradient, diverts part of the water
+and conducts it into a large reservoir, which supplies the mill
+wheels with motor power.  This basin stands beside a frequented
+path and is walled off at the end.
+
+One day, hoisting myself on a playfellow's shoulders, I looked over
+the melancholy wall, all bearded with ferns.  I saw bottomless
+stagnant waters, covered with slimy green.  In the gaps in the
+sticky carpet, a sort of dumpy, black-and-yellow reptile was lazily
+swimming.  Today, I should call it a salamander; at that time, it
+appeared to me the offspring of the serpent and the dragon, of whom
+we were told such bloodcurdling tales when we sat up at night.
+Hoo! I've seen enough: let's get down again, quick!
+
+The brook runs below.  Alders and ash, bending forward on either
+bank, mingle their branches and form a verdant arch.  At their
+feet, behind a porch of great twisted roots, are watery caverns
+prolonged by gloomy corridors.  On the threshold of these
+fastnesses shimmers a glint of sunshine, cut into ovals by the
+leafy sieve above.
+
+This is the haunt of the red-necktied minnows.  Come along very
+gently, lie flat on the ground and look.  What pretty little fish
+they are, with their scarlet throats! Clustering side by side, with
+their heads turned against the stream, they puff their cheeks out
+and in, rinsing their mouths incessantly.  To keep their stationary
+position in the running water, they need naught but a slight quiver
+of their tail and of the fin on their back.  A leaf falls from the
+tree.  Whoosh! The whole troop has disappeared.
+
+On the other side of the brook is a spinney of beeches, with
+smooth, straight trunks, like pillars.  In their majestic, shady
+branches sit chattering crows, drawing from their wings old
+feathers replaced by new.  The ground is padded with moss.  At
+one's first step on the downy carpet, the eye is caught by a
+mushroom, not yet full-spread and looking like an egg dropped there
+by some vagrant hen.  It is the first that I have picked, the first
+that have I turned round and round in my fingers, inquiring into
+its structure with that vague curiosity which is the first
+awakening of observation.
+
+Soon, I find others, differing in size, shape and color.  It is a
+real treat for my prentice eyes.  Some are fashioned like bells,
+like extinguishers, like cups; some are drawn out into spindles,
+hollowed into funnels, rounded into hemispheres.  I come upon some
+that are broken and are weeping milky tears; I step on some that,
+instantly, become tinged with blue; I see some big ones that are
+crumbling into rot and swarming with worms.  Others, shaped like
+pears, are dry and open at the top with a round hole, a sort of
+chimney whence a whiff of smoke escapes when I prod their under
+side with my finger.  These are the most curious.  I fill my
+pockets with them to make them smoke at my leisure, until I exhaust
+the contents, which are at last reduced to a kind of tinder.
+
+What fun I had in that delightful spinney! I returned to it many a
+time after my first find; and here, in the company of the crows, I
+received my first lessons in mushroom lore.  My harvests, I need
+hardly say, were not admitted to the house.  The mushroom, or the
+bouturel, as we called it, had a bad reputation for poisoning
+people.  That was enough to make mother banish it from the family
+table.  I could scarcely understand how the bouturel, so attractive
+in appearance, came to be so wicked; however, I accepted the
+experience of my elders; and no disaster ever ensued from my rash
+friendship with the poisoner.
+
+As my visits to the beech clump were repeated, I managed to divide
+my finds into three categories.  In the first, which was the most
+numerous, the mushroom was furnished underneath with little
+radiating leaves.  In the second, the lower surface was lined with
+a thick pad pricked with hardly visible holes.  In the third, it
+bristled with tiny spots similar to the papillae on a cat's tongue.
+The need of some order to assist the memory made me invent a
+classification for myself.
+
+Very much later there fell into my hands certain small books from
+which I learnt that my three categories were well known; they even
+had Latin names, which fact was far from displeasing to me.
+Ennobled by Latin which provided me with my first exercises and
+translations, glorified by the ancient language which the rector
+used in saying his mass, the mushroom rose in my esteem.  To
+deserve so learned an appellation, it must possess a genuine
+importance.
+
+The same books told me the name of the one that had amused me so
+much with its smoking chimney.  It is called the puffball in
+English, but its French name is the vesse-de-loup.  I disliked the
+expression, which to my mind smacked of bad company.  Next to it
+was a more decent denomination: Lycoperdon; but this was only so in
+appearance, for Greek roots sooner or later taught me that
+Lycoperdon means vesse-de-loup and nothing else.  The history of
+plants abounds in terms which it is not always desirable to
+translate.  Bequeathed to us by earlier ages less reticent than
+ours, botany has often retained the brutal frankness of words that
+set propriety at defiance.
+
+How far off are those blessed times when my childish curiosity
+sought solitary exercise in making itself acquainted with the
+mushroom! 'Eheu! Fugaces labuntur anni!' said Horace.  Ah, yes, the
+years glide fleeting by, especially when they are nearing their
+end! They were the merry brook that dallies among the willows on
+imperceptible slopes; today, they are the torrent swirling a
+thousand straws along, as it rushes towards the abyss.  Fleeting
+though they be, let us make the most of them.  At nightfall, the
+woodcutter hastens to bind his last fagots.  Even so, in my
+declining days, I, a humble woodcutter in the forest of science,
+make haste to put my bundle of sticks in order.  'What will remain
+of my researches on the subject of instinct?  Not much, apparently;
+at most, one or two windows opened on a world that has not yet been
+explored with all the attention which it deserves.
+
+A worse destiny awaits the mushrooms, which were my botanical joys
+from my earliest youth.  I have never ceased to keep up my
+acquaintance with them.  To this day, for the mere pleasure of
+renewing it, I go, with a halting step, to visit them on fine
+autumn afternoons.  I still love to see the fat heads of the
+boletes, the tops of the agarics and the coral-red tufts of the
+clavaria emerge above the carpet pink with heather.
+
+At Serignan, my last stage, they have lavished their seductions
+upon me, so plentiful are they on the neighboring hills, wooded
+with holm oak, arbutus and rosemary.  During these latter years,
+their wealth inspired me with an insane plan: that of collecting in
+effigy what I was unable to keep in its natural state in an
+herbarium.  I began to paint life size pictures of all the species
+in my neighborhood, from the largest to the smallest.  I know
+nothing of the art of painting in watercolors.  No matter: what I
+have never seen practiced I will invent, managing badly at first,
+then a little better, at last well.  The paintbrush will make a
+change from the strain of my daily output of prose.
+
+I end by possessing some hundreds of sheets representing the
+mushrooms of the neighborhood in their natural size and colors.  My
+collection has a certain value.  If it lacks artistic finish, at
+least it boasts the merit of accuracy.  It brings me visitors on
+Sundays, country people, who stare at it in all simplicity,
+astounded that such fine pictures should be done by hand, without a
+copy and without compasses.  They at once recognize the mushroom
+represented; they tell me its popular name, thus proving the
+fidelity of my brush.
+
+Well, what will become of this great pile of drawings, the object
+of so much work?  No doubt, my family will keep the relic for a
+time; but, sooner or later, taking up too much space, shifted from
+cupboard to cupboard, from attic to attic, gnawed by the rats,
+foxed, dirtied and stained, it will fall into the hands of some
+little grandnephews who will cut it into squares to make paper
+caps.  It is the universal rule.  What our illusions have most
+fondly cherished comes to a pitiful end under the claws of ruthless
+reality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII  INSECTS AND MUSHROOMS
+
+It were out of place to recall my long relations with the bolete
+and the agaric if the insect did not here enter into a question of
+grave interest.  Several mushrooms are edible, some even enjoy a
+great reputation; others are formidable poisons.  Short of
+botanical studies that are not within everybody's reach, how are we
+to distinguish the harmless from the venomous?  There is a
+widespread belief which says that any mushroom which insects, or,
+more frequently, their 1arvae, their grubs, accept can be accepted
+without fear; any mushroom which they refuse must be refused.  What
+is wholesome food for them cannot fail to be the same for us; what
+is poisonous to them is bound to be equally baneful to ourselves.
+This is how people argue, with apparent logic, but without
+reflecting upon the very different capabilities of stomachs in the
+matter of diet.  After all, may there not be some justification for
+the belief?  That is what I purpose examining.
+
+The insect, especially in the larval stage, is the principal
+devourer of the mushroom.  We must distinguish between two groups
+of consumers.  The first really eat, that is to say, they break
+their food into little bits, chew it and reduce it to a mouthful
+which is swallowed just as it is; the second drink, after first
+turning their food into a broth, like the bluebottles.  The first
+are the less numerous.  Confining myself to the results of my
+observations in the neighborhood, I count, all told, in the group
+of chewers, four beetles and a moth caterpillar.  To these may be
+added the mollusk, as represented by a slug, or, more specifically,
+an arion, of medium size, brown and adorned with a red edge to his
+mantle.  A modest corporation, when all is said, but active and
+enterprising, especially the moth.
+
+At the head of the mushroom loving beetles, I will place a
+Staphylinid (Oxyporus rufus, LIN.), prettily garbed in red, blue
+and black.  Together with his larva, which walks with the aid of a
+crutch at its back, he haunts the fungus of the poplar (Pholiota
+aegerita, FRIES).  He specializes in an exclusive diet.  I often
+come across him, both in spring and autumn, and never any elsewhere
+than on this mushroom.  For that matter, he had made a wise choice,
+the epicure! This popular fungus is one of our best mushrooms,
+despite its color of a doubtful white, its skin which is often
+wrinkled and its gills soiled with rusty brown at the spores.  We
+must not judge people by appearances, nor mushrooms either.  This
+one, magnificent in shape and color, is poisonous; that other, so
+poor to look at, is excellent.
+
+Here are two more specialist beetles, both of small size.  One is
+the Triplax (Triplax russica, LIN.), who has an orange head and
+corselet and black wing-cases.  His grub tackles the hispid
+polyporus (Polyporus hispidus, BULL.), a coarse and substantial
+dish, bristling at its top with stiff hairs and clinging by its
+side to the old trunks of mulberry trees, sometimes also of walnut
+and elm trees.  The other is the cinnamon-colored Anisotoma
+(Anisotoma cinnamomea, PANZ.).  His larva lives exclusively in
+truffles.
+
+The most interesting of the mushroom-eating beetles is the
+Bolboceras (Bolboceras gallicus, MUL.).  I have described elsewhere
+his manner of living, his little song that sounds like the chirping
+of a bird, his perpendicular wells sunk in search of an underground
+mushroom (Hydnocystis orenaria, TUL.), which constitutes his
+regular nourishment.  He is also an ardent lover of truffles.  I
+have taken from between his legs, at the bottom of his manor house,
+a real truffle the size of a hazelnut (Tuber Requienii, TUL.).  I
+tried to rear him in order to make the acquaintance of his grub; I
+housed him in a large earthen pan filled with fresh sand and
+enclosed in a bell cover.  Possessing neither hydnocistes nor
+truffles, I served him up sundry mushrooms of a rather firm
+consistency, like those of his choice.  He refused them all,
+helvellae and clavariae, chanterelles and pezizae alike.
+
+With a rhizopogon, a sort of little fungoid potato, which is
+frequent in pine woods at a moderate depth and sometimes even on
+the surface, I achieved complete success.  I had strewn a handful
+of them on the sand of my breeding pan.  At nightfall, I often
+surprised the Bolboceras issuing from his well, exploring the
+stretch of sand, choosing a piece not too big for his strength and
+gently rolling it towards his abode.  He would go in again, leaving
+the rhizopogon, which was too large to take inside, on the
+threshold, where it served the purpose of a door.  Next day, I
+found the piece gnawed, but only on the under side.
+
+The Bolboceras does not like eating in public, in the open air; he
+needs the discreet retirement of his crypt.  When he fails to find
+his food by burrowing under ground, he comes up to look for it on
+the surface.  Meeting with a morsel to his taste, he takes it home
+when its size permits; if not, he leaves it on the threshold of his
+burrow and gnaws at it from below, without reappearing outside.  Up
+to the present, hydnocistes, truffles and rhizopoga are the only
+food that I have known him to eat.  These three instances tell us
+at any rate that the Bolboceras is not a specialist like the
+Oxyporus and the Triplax; he is able to vary his diet; perhaps he
+feeds on all the underground mushrooms indiscriminately.
+
+The moth enlarges her domain yet further.  Her caterpillar is a
+grub five or six millimeters long, white, with a black shiny head.
+Colonies of it abound in most mushrooms.  It attacks by preference
+the top of the stem, for epicurean reasons that escape me; thence
+it spreads throughout the cap.  It is the habitual boarder of the
+boletes, agarics, lactarii and russulie.  Apart from certain
+species and certain groups, everything suits it.  This puny grub,
+which will spin itself an infinitesimal cocoon of white silk under
+the piece attacked and will later become an insignificant moth, is
+the primordial ravager.
+
+Let us next mention the arion, that voracious mollusk who also
+tackles most mushrooms of some size.  He digs himself spacious
+niches inside them and there sits blissfully eating.  Few in
+numbers, compared with the other devourers, he usually sets up
+house alone.  He has, by way of a set of jaws, a powerful plane
+which creates great breaches in the object of his depredations.  It
+is he whose havoc is most apparent.
+
+Now all these gnawers can be recognized by their leavings, such as
+crumbs and worm holes.  They dig clean passages, they slash and
+crumble without a slimy trail, they are the pinkers.  The others,
+the liquefiers, are the chemists; they dissolve their food by means
+of reagents.  All are the grubs of flies and belong to the
+commonalty of the Muscidae.  Many are their species.  To
+distinguish them from one another by rearing them in order to
+obtain the perfect stage would involve a great expenditure of time
+to little profit.  We will describe them by the general name of
+maggots.
+
+To see them at work, I select, as the field of exploitation, the
+satanic bolete (Boletus Satanas, LENZ.), one of the largest
+mushrooms that I can gather in my neighborhood.  It has a dirty-
+white cap; the mouths of the tubes are a bright orange-red; the
+stem swells into a bulb with a delicate network of carmine veins.
+I divide a perfectly sound specimen into equal parts and place
+these in two deep plates, put side by side.  One of the halves is
+left as it is: it will act as a control, a term of comparison.  The
+other half receives on the pores of its undersurface a couple of
+dozen maggots taken from a second bolete in full process of
+decomposition.
+
+The dissolving action of the grub asserts itself on the very day
+whereon these preparations are made.  The undersurface, originally
+a bright red, turns brown and runs in every direction into a mass
+of dark stalactites.  Soon, the flesh of the cap is attacked and,
+in a few days, becomes a gruel similar to liquid asphalt.  It is
+almost as fluid as water.  In this broth the maggots wallow,
+wriggling their bodies and, from time to time, sticking the
+breathing holes in their sterns above the water.  It is an exact
+repetition of what the liquefiers of meat, the grubs of the grey
+flesh fly and the bluebottle, have lately shown us.  As for the
+second half of the bolete, the half which I did not colonize with
+vermin, it remains compact, the same as it was at the start, except
+that its appearance is a little withered by evaporation.  The
+fluidity, therefore, is really and truly the work of the grubs and
+of them alone.
+
+Does this liquefaction imply an easy change?  One would think so at
+first, on seeing how quickly it is performed by the action of the
+grubs.  Moreover, certain mushrooms, the coprini, liquefy
+spontaneously and turn into a black fluid.  One of them bears the
+expressive name of the inky mushroom (Coprinus atramentarius,
+BULL.) and dissolves into ink of its own accord.  The conversion,
+in certain cases, is singularly rapid.  One day, I was drawing one
+of our prettiest coprini (Coprinus sterquilinus, FRIES), which
+comes out of a little purse or volva.  My work was barely done, a
+couple of hours after gathering the fresh mushroom, when the model
+had disappeared, leaving nothing but a pool of ink upon the table.
+Had I procrastinated ever so little, I should not have had time to
+finish and I should have lost a rare and interesting find.
+
+This does not mean that the other mushrooms, especially the
+boletes, are of ephemeral duration and lacking in consistency.  I
+made the attempt with the edible bolete (Boletus edulis, BULL.),
+the famous cepe of our kitchens, so highly esteemed for its flavor.
+I was wondering whether it would not be possible to obtain from it
+a sort of Liebig's extract of fungus, which would be useful in
+cooking.  With this purpose, I had some of these mushrooms cut into
+small pieces and boiled, on the one hand, in plain water and, on
+the other, in water with bicarbonate of soda added.  The treatment
+lasted two whole days.  The flesh of the bolete was indomitable.
+To attack it, I should have had to employ violent drugs, which were
+inadmissible in view of the result to be attained.
+
+What prolonged boiling and the aid of bicarbonate of soda leave
+almost intact the fly's grubs quickly turn into fluid, even as the
+flesh worms fluidify hard-boiled white of egg.  This is done in
+each instance without violence, probably by means of a special
+pepsin, which is not the same in both cases.  The liquefier of meat
+has its own brand; the liquefier of the bolete has another sort.
+The plate, then, is filled with a dark, running gruel, not unlike
+tar in appearance.  If we allow evaporation free course, the broth
+sets, into a hard, easily crumbled slab, something like toffee.
+Caught in this matrix, grubs and pupa perish, incapable of freeing
+themselves.  Analytical chemistry has proved fatal to them.  The
+conditions are quite different when the attack is delivered on the
+surface of the ground.  Gradually absorbed by the soil, the excess
+of liquid disappears, leaving the colonists free.  In my dishes, it
+collects indefinitely, killing the inhabitants when it dries up
+into a solid layer.
+
+The purple bolete (Boletus purpureus, FRIES), when subjected to the
+action of the maggots, gives the same result as the Satanic bolete,
+namely, a black gruel.  Note that both mushrooms turn blue if
+broken and especially if crushed.  With the edible bolete, whose
+flesh invariably remains white when cut, the product of its
+liquefaction by the vermin is a very pale brown.  With the oronge,
+or imperial mushroom, the result is a broth which the eye would
+take for a thin apricot jam.  Tests made with sundry other
+mushrooms confirm the rule: all, when attacked by the maggot, turn
+into a more or less fluid mess, which varies in color.
+
+Why do the two boletes with the red tubes, the purple bolete and
+the satanic bolete, change into a dark gruel?  I have an inkling of
+the reason.  Both of them turn blue, with an admixture of green.  A
+third species, the bluish bolete (Boletus cyanescens, BULL., var.
+lacteus, LEVEILLE), possess remarkable color sensitiveness.  Bruise
+it ever so lightly, no matter where, on the cap, the stem, the
+tubes of the undersurface: forthwith, the wounded part, originally
+a pure white, is tinted a beautiful blue.  Place this bolete in an
+atmosphere of carbonic acid gas.  We can now knock it, crush it,
+reduce it to pulp; and the blue no longer shows.  But extract a
+fragment from the crushed mass: immediately, at the first contact
+with the air, the matter turns a most glorious blue.  It reminds us
+of a process employed in dyeing.  The indigo of commerce, steeped
+in water containing lime and sulfate of iron, or copperas, is
+deprived of a part of its oxygen; it loses its color and becomes
+soluble in water, as it was in the original indigo plant, before
+the treatment which the plant underwent.  A colorless liquid
+results.  Expose a drop of this liquid to the air.  Straightway,
+oxidization works upon the product: the indigo is reformed,
+insoluble and blue.
+
+This is exactly what we see in the boletes that turn blue so
+readily.  Could they, in fact, contain soluble, colorless indigo?
+One would say so, if certain properties did not give grounds for
+doubt.  When subjected to prolonged exposure to the air, the
+boletes that are apt to turn blue, particularly the most
+remarkable, Boletus cyanescens, lose their color, instead of
+retaining the deep blue which would be a sign of real indigo.  Be
+this as it may, these mushrooms contain a coloring principle which
+is very liable to change under the influence of the air.  Why
+should we not regard it as the cause of the black tint when the
+maggots have liquefied the boletes which turn blue?  The others,
+those with the white flesh, the edible bolete, for instance, do not
+assume this asphalty appearance once they are liquefied by the
+grubs.
+
+All the boletes that change to blue when broken have a bad
+reputation; the books treat them as dangerous, or at least open to
+suspicion.  The name of Satanic awarded to one of them is an ample
+proof of our fears.  The caterpillar and the maggot are of another
+opinion: they greedily devour what we hold in dread.  Now here is a
+strange thing: those passionate devotees of Boletus Satanas
+absolutely refuse certain mushrooms which we find delightful
+eating, including the most celebrated of all, the oronge, the
+imperial mushroom, which the Romans of the empire, past masters in
+gluttony, called the food of the gods, cibus deorum, the agaric of
+the Caesars, Agaricus caesareus.  It is the most elegant of all our
+mushrooms.  When it prepares to make its appearance by lifting the
+fissured earth, it is a handsome ovoid formed by the outer wrapper,
+the volva.  Then this purse gently tears and the jagged opening
+partly reveals a globular object of a magnificent orange.  Take a
+hen's egg, boil it, remove the shell: what remains will be the
+imperial mushroom in its purse.  Remove a part of the white at the
+top, uncovering a little of the yolk.  Then you have the nascent
+imperial.  The likeness is perfect.  And so the people of my part,
+struck by the resemblance, call this mushroom lou rousset d'iou,
+or, in other words, yolk of egg.  Soon, the cap emerges entirely
+and spreads into a disk softer than satin to the touch and richer
+to the eye than all the fruit of the Hesperides.  Appearing amid
+the pink heather, it is an entrancing object.
+
+Well, this gorgeous agaric (Amanita caesarea, SCOP.), this food of
+the gods the maggot absolutely refuses.  My frequent examinations
+have never shown me an imperial attacked by the grubs in the field.
+It needs imprisonment in a jar and the absence of other victuals to
+provoke the attempt; and even then the treacle hardly seems to suit
+them.  After the liquefaction, the grubs try to make off, showing
+that the fare is not to their liking.  The Mollusk also, the Arion,
+is anything but an ardent consumer.  Passing close to an imperial
+mushroom and finding nothing better, he stops and takes a bite,
+without lingering.  If, therefore, we required the evidence of the
+insect, or even of the Slug, to know which mushrooms are good to
+eat, we should refuse the best of them all.  Though respected by
+the vermin, the glorious imperial is nevertheless ruined not by
+larvae, but by a parasitic fungus, the Mycogone rosea, which
+spreads in a purply stain and turns it into a putrid mass.  This is
+the only despoiler that I know it to possess.
+
+A second amanita, the sheathed amanita (Amanita vaginata, BULL.),
+prettily streaked on the edges of the cap, is of an exquisite
+flavor, almost equal to the imperial.  It is called lou pichot
+gris, the grayling, in these parts, because of its coloring, which
+is usually an ashen gray.  Neither the maggot nor the even more
+enterprising Moth ever touches it.  They likewise refuse the
+mottled amanita (Amanita pantherina, D.  C.), the vernal amanita
+(Amanita verna, FRIES) and the lemon-yellow amanita (Amanita
+citrina, SCHAEFF.), all three of which are poisonous.  In short,
+whether it be to us a delicious dish or a deadly poison, no amanita
+is accepted by the grubs.  The arion alone sometimes bites at it.
+The cause of the refusal escapes us.  It were vain, speaking of the
+mottled amanita, for instance, to allege as a reason the presence
+of an alkaloid fatal to the grubs, for we should have to ask
+ourselves why the imperial, the amanita of the Caesars, which is
+wholly free from poison, is rejected no less uncompromisingly than
+the venomous species.  Could it perhaps be lack of relish, a
+deficiency of seasoning for stimulating the appetite?  In point of
+fact, when eaten raw, the amanitas have no particular flavor.
+
+What shall we learn from the sharper-flavored mushrooms?  Here, in
+the pinewoods, is the woolly milk mushroom (Lactarius torminosus,
+SCHAEFF.), turned in at the edges and wrapped in a curly fleece.
+Its taste is biting, worse than Cayenne pepper.  Torminosus means
+colic producing.  The name is very suitable.  Unless he possessed a
+stomach built for the purpose, the man who touched such food as
+this would have a singularly bad time before him.  Well, that
+stomach the vermin possess: they revel in the pungency of the
+woolly milk mushroom even as the spurge caterpillar browses with
+delight on the loathsome leaves of the euphorbiae.  As for us, we
+might as well, in either case, eat live coals.
+
+Is a condiment of this kind necessary to the grubs?  Not at all.
+Here, in the same pinewoods, is the "delicious" milk mushroom
+(Lactarius deliciosus, LIN.), a glorious orange-red crater, adorned
+with concentric zones.  If bruised, it assumes a verdigris hue,
+possibly a variant of the indigo tint peculiar to the blue-turning
+boletes.  From its flesh laid bare by being broken or cut ooze
+blood-red€ drops, a well-defined characteristic peculiar to this
+milk mushroom.  Here the violent spices of the woolly milk mushroom
+disappear; the flesh has a pleasant taste when eaten raw.  No
+matter: the vermin devour the mild milk mushroom with the same zest
+with which they devour the horribly peppered one.  To them the
+delicate and the strong, the insipid and the peppery are all alike.
+
+The epithet 'delicious' applied to the mushroom whose wound weeps
+tears of blood is highly exaggerated.  It is edible, no doubt, but
+it is coarse eating and difficult to digest.  My household refuses
+it for cooking purposes.  We prefer to put it to soak in vinegar
+and afterwards to use it as we might use pickled gherkins.  The
+real value of this mushroom is largely overrated thanks to a too
+laudatory epithet.
+
+Is a certain degree of consistency required, to suit the grubs:
+something midway between the softness of the amanitas and the
+firmness of the milk mushrooms?  Let us begin by questioning the
+olive tree agaric or luminous mushroom (Pleurotus phosphoreus,
+BATT.), a magnificent mushroom colored jujube red.  Its popular
+name is not particularly appropriate.  True, it frequently grows at
+the base of old olive trees, but I also pick it at the foot of the
+box, the holm oak, the plum tree, the cypress, the almond tree, the
+Guelder rose and other trees and shrubs.  It seems fairly
+indifferent to the nature of the support.  A more remarkable
+feature distinguishes it from all the other European mushrooms: it
+is phosphorescent.  On the lower surface and there only, it sheds a
+soft, white gleam, similar to that of the glowworm.  It lights up
+to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its spores.  There is
+no question of chemist's phosphorus here.  This is a slow
+combustion, a sort of more active respiration than usual.  The
+luminous emission is extinguished in the unbreathable gases,
+nitrogen and carbonic acid; it continues in aerated water; it
+ceases in water deprived of its air by boiling.  It is exceedingly
+faint, however, so much so that it is not perceptible except in the
+deepest darkness.  At night and even by day, if the eyes have been
+prepared for it by a preliminary wait in the darkness of a cellar,
+this agaric is a wonderful sight, looking indeed like a piece of
+the full moon.
+
+Now what do the vermin do?  Are they drawn by this beacon?  In no
+wise: maggots, caterpillars and slugs never touch the resplendent
+mushroom.  Let us not be too quick to explain this refusal by the
+noxious properties of the olive tree agaric, which is said to be
+extremely poisonous.  Here, in fact, on the pebbly ground of the
+wastelands, is the eryngo agaric (Pleurotus eryngii, D.  C.), which
+has the same consistency as the other.  It is the berigoulo of the
+Provencaux, one of the most highly esteemed mushrooms.  Well, the
+vermin will have none of it: what is a treat to us is detestable to
+them.
+
+It is superfluous to continue this method of investigation: the
+reply would be everywhere the same.  The insect, which feeds on one
+sort of mushroom and refuses others, cannot tell us anything about
+the kinds that are good or bad for us.  Its stomach is not ours.
+It pronounces excellent what we find poisonous; it pronounces
+poisonous what we think excellent.  That being so, when we are
+lacking in the botanical knowledge which most of us have neither
+time nor inclination to acquire, what course are we to take?  The
+course is extremely simple.
+
+During the thirty years and more that I have lived at Serignan, I
+have never heard of one case of mushroom poisoning, even the
+mildest, in the village; and yet there are plenty of mushrooms
+eaten here, especially in autumn.  Not a family but, when on a walk
+in the mountains, gathers a precious addition to its modest
+alimentary resources.  What do these people gather?  A little of
+everything.  Often, when rambling in the neighboring woods, I
+inspect the baskets of the mushroom pickers, who are delighted for
+me to look.  I see things fit to make mycological experts stand
+aghast.  I often find the purple bolete, which is classed among the
+dangerous varieties.  I made the remark one day.  The man carrying
+the basket stared at me in astonishment: 'That a poison! The wolf's
+bread!' he said, patting the plump bolete with his hand.  'What an
+idea! It's beef marrow, sir, regular beef marrow!' [Author's note:
+People use them indiscriminately for cooking purposes, after
+removing the tubes on the under side, which are easily separated
+from the rest of the mushroom.]
+
+He smiled at my apprehensions and went away with a poor opinion of
+my knowledge in the matter of mushrooms.
+
+In the baskets aforesaid, I find the ringed agaric (Armillaria
+mellea, FRIES), which is stigmatized as valde venenatus by Persoon,
+an expert on the subject.  It is even the mushroom most frequently
+made use of, because of its being so plentiful, especially at the
+foot of the mulberry trees.  I find the Satanic bolete, that
+dangerous tempter; the belted milk mushroom (Lactarius zonarius,
+BULL.), whose burning flavor rivals the pepper of its woolly
+kinsman; the smooth-headed amanita (Amanita leiocophala, D.  C.), a
+magnificent white dome rising out of an ample volva and fringed at
+the edges with floury relics resembling flakes of casein.  Its
+poisonous smell and soapy aftertaste should lead to suspicion of
+this ivory dome; but nobody seems to mind them.
+
+How, with such careless picking, are accidents avoided?  In my
+village and for a long way around, the rule is to blanch the
+mushrooms, that is to say, to bring them to the boil in water with
+a little salt in it.  A few rinsings in cold water conclude the
+treatment.  They are then prepared in whatever manner one pleases.
+In this way, what might at first be dangerous becomes harmless,
+because the preliminary boiling and rinsing have removed the
+noxious elements.
+
+My personal experience confirms the efficacy of this rustic method.
+At home, we very often make use of the ringed agaric, which is
+reputed extremely dangerous.  When rendered wholesome by the ordeal
+of boiling water, it becomes a dish of which I have naught but good
+to say.  Then again the smooth-headed amanita frequently appears
+upon my table, after being duly boiled: if it were not first
+treated in this fashion, it would be hardly safe.  I have tried the
+blue-turning boletes, especially the purple bolete and the Satanic.
+They answered very well to the eulogistic term of beef marrow
+applied to them by the mushroom picker who scouted my prudent
+counsels.  I have sometimes employed the mottled amanita, so ill
+famed in the books, without disastrous result.  One of my friends,
+a doctor, to whom I communicated my ideas about the boiling water
+treatment, thought that he would make the experiment on his own
+account.  He chose the lemon-yellow amanita, which has as bad a
+reputation as the mottled variety, and ate it at supper.
+Everything went off without the slightest inconvenience.  Another,
+a blind friend, in whose company I was one day to taste the Cossus
+of the Roman epicures, treated himself to the olive tree agaric,
+said to he so formidable.  The dish was, if not excellent, at least
+harmless.
+
+It results from these facts that a good preliminary boiling is the
+best safeguard against accidents arising from mushrooms.  If the
+insect, devouring one species and refusing another, cannot guide us
+in any way, at least rustic wisdom, the fruit of long experience,
+prescribes a rule of conduct which is both simple and efficacious.
+You are tempted by a basketful of mushrooms, but you do not feel
+very sure as to their good or evil properties.  Then have them
+blanched, well and thoroughly blanched.  When it leaves the
+purgatory of the stewpan, the doubtful mushroom can be eaten
+without fear.
+
+But this, you will tell me, is a system of cookery fit for savages:
+the treatment with boiling water will reduce the mushrooms to a
+mash; it will take away all their flavor and all their succulence.
+That is a complete mistake.  The mushroom stands the ordeal
+exceedingly well.  I have described my failure to subdue the cepes
+when I was trying to obtain an extract from them.  Prolonged
+boiling, with the aid of bicarbonate of soda, so far from reducing
+them to a mess, left them very nearly intact.  The other mushrooms
+whose size entitles them to culinary consideration offer the same
+degree of resistance.  In the second place, there is no loss of
+succulence and hardly any of flavor.  Moreover, they become much
+more digestible, which is a most important condition in a dish
+generally so heavy for the stomach.  For this reason, it is the
+custom, in my family, to treat them one and all with boiling water,
+including even the glorious imperial.
+
+I am a Philistine, it is true, a barbarian caring little for the
+refinements of cookery.  I am not thinking of the epicure, but of
+the frugal man, the husbandman especially.  I should consider
+myself amply repaid for my persistent observations if I succeeded
+in popularizing, however little, the wise Provencal recipe for
+mushrooms, an excellent food that makes a pleasant change from the
+dish of beans or potatoes, when we can overcome the difficulty of
+distinguishing between the harmless and the dangerous.
+
+[Recorder's note: Modern mycologists warn against Fabre's claim
+that boiling neutralizes all mushroom poisons.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX  A MEMORABLE LESSON
+
+I take leave of the mushrooms with regret: there would be so many
+other questions to solve concerning them! Why do the maggots eat
+the Satanic bolete and scorn the imperial mushroom?  How is it that
+they find delicious what we find poisonous and why is it that what
+seems exquisite to our taste is loathsome to theirs?  Can there be
+special compounds in mushrooms, alkaloids, apparently, which vary
+according to the botanical genus?  Would it be possible to isolate
+them and study their properties fully?  Who knows whether medical
+science could not employ them in relieving our ailments, even as it
+employs quinine, morphia and other alkaloids?  One might inquire
+into the cause of the liquefaction of the coprini, which is
+spontaneous, and that of the boletes, which is brought about by the
+maggots.  Do both cases come within the same category?  Does the
+coprinus digest itself by virtue of a pepsin similar to the
+maggots'?  One would like to discover the oxidizable substance that
+gives the luminous mushroom its soft, white light, which is like
+the beams of the full moon.  It would be interesting to know
+whether certain boletes turn blue owing to the presence of an
+indigo which is more liable to change than dyers' indigo and
+whether the green of the so-called delicious milk mushroom when
+bruised is due to a like cause.
+
+All these patient chemical investigations would tempt me, if the
+rudimentary equipment of my laboratory and especially the
+irrevocable flight of age-worn hopes permitted it.  The day has
+passed for it now; there is no time left to me.  No matter: let us
+talk chemistry once more, for a little while; and, for want of
+something better, let us revive old memories.  If the historian,
+now and again, takes a small place in the story of his animals, the
+reader will kindly excuse him: old age is prone to these
+reminiscences, the bloom of later days.
+
+I have received, in all, two lessons of a scientific character in
+the course of my life: one in anatomy and one in chemistry.  I owe
+the first to the learned naturalist Moquin-Tandon, who, on our
+return from a botanizing expedition to Monte Renoso, in Corsica,
+showed me the structure of a Snail in a plate filled with water.
+It was short and fruitful.  From that moment, I was initiated.
+Henceforth, I was to wield the scalpel and decently to explore an
+animal's interior without any other guidance from a master.  The
+second lesson, that of chemistry, was less fortunate.  I will tell
+you what happened.
+
+In my normal school, the scientific teaching was on an exceedingly
+modest scale, consisting mainly of arithmetic and odds and ends of
+geometry.  Physics was hardly touched.  We were taught a little
+meteorology, in a summary fashion: a word or two about a red moon,
+a white frost, dew, snow and wind; and, with this smattering of
+rustic physics, we were considered to know enough of the subject to
+discuss the weather with the farmer and the plowman.
+
+Of natural history, absolutely nothing.  No one thought of telling
+us anything about flowers and trees, which give such zest to one's
+aimless rambles, nor about insects, with their curious habits, nor
+about stones, so instructive with their fossil records.  That
+entrancing glance through the windows of the world was refused us.
+Grammar was allowed to strangle life.
+
+Chemistry was never mentioned either: that goes without saying.  I
+knew the word, however.  My casual reading, only half-understood
+for want of practical demonstration, had taught me that chemistry
+is concerned with the shuffle of matter, uniting or separating the
+various elements.  But what a strange idea I formed of this branch
+of study! To me it smacked of sorcery, of alchemy and its search
+for the philosopher's stone.  To my mind, every chemist, when at
+work, should have had a magic wand in his hand and the wizard's
+pointed, star studded cap on his head.
+
+An important personage who sometimes visited the school, in his
+capacity as an honorary lecturer, was not the man to rid me of
+those foolish notions.  He taught physics and chemistry at the
+grammar school.  Twice a week, from eight to nine o'clock in the
+evening, he held a free public class in an enormous building
+adjacent to our schoolhouse.  This was the former Church of Saint-
+Martial, which has today become a Protestant meeting house.
+
+It was a wizard's cave certainly, just as I had pictured it.  At
+the top of the steeple, a rusty weathercock creaked mournfully; in
+the dusk, great Bats flew all around the edifice or dived down the
+throats of the gargoyles; at night, Owls hooted upon the copings of
+the leads.  It was inside, under the immensities of the vault, that
+my chemist used to perform.  What infernal mixtures did he
+compound?  Should I ever know?
+
+It is the day for his visit.  He comes to see us with no pointed
+cap: in ordinary garb, in fact, with nothing very queer about him.
+He bursts into our schoolroom like a hurricane.  His red face is
+half-buried in the enormous stiff collar that digs into his ears.
+A few wisps of red hair adorn his temples; the top of his head
+shines like an old ivory ball.  In a dictatorial voice and with
+wooden gestures, he questions two or three of the boys; after a
+moment's bullying, he turns on his heel and goes off in a whirlwind
+as he came.  No, this is not the man, a capital fellow at heart, to
+inspire me with a pleasant idea of the things which he teaches.
+
+Two windows of his laboratory look out upon the garden of the
+school.  One can just lean on them; and I often come and peep in,
+trying to make out, in my poor brain, what chemistry can really be.
+Unfortunately, the room into which my eyes penetrate is not the
+sanctuary but a mere outhouse where the learned implements and
+crockery are washed.  Leaden pipes with taps run down the walls;
+wooden vats occupy the corners.  Sometimes, those vats bubble,
+heated by a spray of steam.  A reddish powder, which looks like
+brick dust, is boiling in them.  I learn that the simmering stuff
+is a dyer's root, known as madder, which will be converted into a
+purer and more concentrated product.  This is the master's pet
+study.
+
+What I saw from the two windows was not enough for me.  I wanted to
+see farther, into the very classroom.  My wish was satisfied.  It
+was the end of the scholastic year.  A stage ahead in the regular
+work, I had just obtained my certificate.  I was free.  A few weeks
+remain before the holidays.  Shall I go and spend them out of
+doors, in all the gaiety of my eighteen summers?  No, I will spend
+them at the school which, for two years past, has provided me with
+an untroubled roof and my daily crust.  I will wait until a post is
+found for me.  Employ my willing service as you think fit, do with
+me what you will: as long as I can study, I am indifferent to the
+rest.
+
+The principal of the school, the soul of kindness, has grasped my
+passion for knowledge.  He encourages me in my determination; he
+proposes to make me renew my acquaintance with Horace and Virgil,
+so long since forgotten.  He knows Latin, he does; he will rekindle
+the dead spark by making me translate a few passages.  He does
+more: he lends me an Imitation with parallel texts in Latin and
+Greek.  With the first text, which I am almost able to read, I will
+puzzle out the second and thus increase the small vocabulary which
+I acquired in the days when I was translating Aesop's Fables.  It
+will be all the better for my future studies.  What luck! Board and
+lodging, ancient poetry, the classical languages, all the good
+things at once!
+
+I did better still.  Our science master--the real, not the honorary
+one--who came twice a week to discourse of the rule of three and
+the properties of the triangle, had the brilliant idea of letting
+us celebrate the end of the school year with a feast of learning.
+He promised to show us oxygen.  As a colleague of the chemist in
+the grammar school, he obtained leave to take us to the famous
+laboratory and there to handle the object of his lesson under our
+very eyes.  Oxygen, yes, oxygen, the all-consuming gas; that was
+what we were to see on the morrow.  I could not sleep all night for
+thinking of it.
+
+Thursday afternoon came at last.  As soon as the chemistry lesson
+is over, we were to go for a walk to Les Angles, the pretty village
+over yonder, perched on a steep rock.  We were therefore in our
+Sunday best, our out-of-doors clothes: black frock coats and tall
+hats.  The whole school was there, some thirty of us, in the charge
+of an usher, who knew as little as we did of the things which we
+were about to see.  We crossed the threshold of the laboratory, not
+without excitement.  I entered a great nave with a Gothic roof, an
+old, bare church through which one's voice echoed, into which the
+light penetrated discreetly through stained glass windows set in
+ribs and rosettes of stone.  At the back were huge raised benches,
+with room for an audience of many hundreds; at the other end, where
+the choir once was, stood an enormous chimney mantel; in the middle
+was a large, massive table, corroded by the chemicals.  At one end
+of this table was a tarred tub, lined inside with lead and filled
+with water.  This, I at once learned, was the pneumatic trough, the
+vessel in which the gases were collected.
+
+The professor begins the experiment.  He takes a sort of large,
+long glass bulb, bent abruptly in the region of the neck.  This, he
+informs us, is a retort.  He pours into it, from a screw of paper,
+some black stuff that looks like powdered charcoal.  This is
+manganese dioxide, the master tells us.  It contains in abundance,
+in a condensed state and retained by combination with the metal,
+the gas which we propose to obtain.  An oily looking liquid,
+sulfuric acid, an excessively powerful agent, will set it at
+liberty.  Thus filled, the retort is placed on a lighted stove.  A
+glass tube brings it into communication with a bell jar full of
+water on the shelf of the pneumatic trough.  Those are all the
+preparations.  What will be the result?  We must wait for the
+action of heat.
+
+My fellow pupils gather eagerly round the apparatus, cannot come
+close enough to it.  Some of them play the part of the fly on the
+wheel and glory in contributing to the success of the experiment.
+They straighten the retort, which is leaning to one side; they blow
+with their mouths on the coals in the stove.  I do not care for
+these familiarities with the unknown.  The good natured master
+raises no objection; but I have never been able to endure the
+thronging of a crowd of gapers, who are very busy with their elbows
+and force their way to the front row to see whatever is happening,
+even though it be merely a couple of mongrels fighting.  Let us
+withdraw and leave these officious ones to themselves.  There is so
+much to see here, while the oxygen is being prepared.  Let us make
+the most of the occasion and take a look round the chemist's
+arsenal.
+
+Under the spacious chimney mantel is a collection of queer stoves,
+bound round with bands of sheet iron.  There are long and short
+ones, high and low ones, all pierced with little windows that are
+closed with a terracotta shutter.  This one, a sort of little
+tower, is formed of several parts placed one above the other and
+each supplied with big round handles to hold them by when you take
+the monument to pieces.  A dome, with an iron chimney, tops the
+whole edifice, which must be capable of producing a very hell fire
+to roast a stone of no significance.  Another, a squat one,
+stretches out like a curved spine.  It has a round hole at either
+end; and a thick porcelain tube sticks out from each.  It is
+impossible to conceive the purpose which such instruments as these
+can serve.  The seekers of the philosopher's stone must have had
+many like them.  They are torturers' engines, tearing the metals'
+secrets from them.
+
+The glass things are arranged on shelves.  I see retorts of
+different sizes, all with necks bent at a sudden angle.  In
+addition to their long beak, some of them have a narrow little tube
+coming out of their bulb.  Look, youngster, and do not try to guess
+the object of these curious vessels.  I see glasses with feet to
+them, funnel-shaped and deep; I stand amazed at strange looking
+bottles with two or three mouths to each, at phials swelling into a
+balloon with a long, narrow tube.  What an odd array of implements!
+And here are glass cupboards with a host of bottles and jars,
+filled with all manner of chemicals.  The labels apprise me of
+their contents: molybdenite of ammonia, chloride of antimony,
+permanganate of potash and ever so many other strange terms.
+Never, in all my reading, have I met with such repellent language.
+
+Suddenly, bang! And there is running and stamping and shouting and
+cries of pain! What has happened?  I rush up from the back of the
+room.  The retort has burst, squirting its boiling vitriol in every
+direction.  The wall opposite is all stained with it.  Most of my
+fellow pupils have been more or less struck.  One poor youth has
+had the splashes full in his face, right into his eyes.  He is
+yelling like a madman.  With the help of a friend who has come off
+better than the others, I drag him outside by main force, take him
+to the sink, which fortunately is close at hand, and hold his face
+under the tap.  This swift ablution serves its purpose.  The
+horrible pain begins to be allayed, so much so that the sufferer
+recovers his senses and is able to continue the washing process for
+himself.
+
+My prompt aid certainly saved his sight.  A week later, with the
+help of the doctor's lotions, all danger was over.  How lucky it
+was that I took it into my head to keep some way off! My isolation,
+as I stood looking into the glass case of chemicals, left me all my
+presence of mind, all my readiness of resource.  What are the
+others doing, those who got splashed through standing too near the
+chemical bomb?  I return to the lecture hall.  It is not a cheerful
+spectacle.  The master has come off badly: his shirtfront,
+waistcoat and trousers are covered with smears, which are all
+smoldering and burning into holes.  He hurriedly divests himself of
+a portion of his dangerous raiment.  Those of us who possess the
+smartest clothes lend him something to put on so that he can go
+home decently.
+
+One of the tall, funnel-shaped glasses which I was admiring just
+now is standing, full of ammonia, on the table.  All, coughing and
+sniveling, dip their handkerchiefs into it and rub the moist rag
+over their hats and coats.  In this way, the red stains left by the
+horrible compound are made to disappear.  A drop of ink will
+presently restore the color completely.
+
+And the oxygen?  There was no more question, I need hardly say, of
+that.  The feast of learning was over.  Never mind: the disastrous
+lesson was a mighty event for me.  I had been inside the chemist's
+laboratory; I had had a glimpse of those wonderful jars and tubes.
+In teaching, what matters most is not the thing taught, whether
+well or badly grasped: it is the stimulus given to the pupil's
+latent aptitudes; it is the fulminate awakening the slumbering
+explosives.  One day, I shall obtain on my own account that oxygen
+which ill luck has denied me; one day, without a master, I shall
+yet learn chemistry.
+
+Yes, I shall learn this chemistry, which started so disastrously.
+And how?  By teaching it.  I do not recommend that method to
+anybody.  Happy the man who is guided by a master's word and
+example! He has a smooth and easy road before him, lying straight
+ahead.  The other follows a rugged path, in which his feet often
+stumble; he goes groping into the unknown and loses his way.  To
+recover the right road, if want of success have not discouraged
+him, he can rely only on perseverance, the sole compass of the
+poor.  Such was my fate.  I taught myself by teaching others, by
+passing on to them the modicum of seed that had ripened on the
+barren moor cleared, from day to day, by my patient plowshare.
+
+A few months after the incident of the vitriol bomb, I was sent to
+Carpentras to take charge of junior classes at the college there.
+The first year was a difficult one, swamped as I was by the
+excessive number of pupils, a set of duffers kept out of the more
+advanced classes and all at different stages in spelling and
+grammar.  Next year, my school is divided into two; I have an
+assistant.  A weeding-out takes place in my crowd of scatterbrains.
+I keep the older, the more intelligent ones; the others are to have
+a term in the preparatory division.  From that day forward, things
+are different.  Curriculum there is none.  In those happy times,
+the master's personality counted for something; there was no such
+thing as the scholastic piston working with the regularity of a
+machine.  It was left for me to act as I thought fit.  Well, what
+should I do to make the school earn its title of 'upper primary'?
+
+Why, of course! Among other things, I shall do some chemistry! My
+reading has taught me that it does no harm to know a little
+chemistry, if you would make your furrows yield a good return.
+Many of my pupils come from the country; they will go back to it to
+improve their land.  Let us show them what the soil is made of and
+what the plant feeds on.  Others will follow industrial careers;
+they will become tanners, metal founders, distillers; they will
+sell cakes of soap and kegs of anchovies.  Let us show them
+pickling, soap making, stills, tannin and metals.  Of course, I
+know nothing about these things, but I shall learn, all the more so
+as I shall have to teach them to the boys; and your schoolboy is a
+little demon for jeering at the master's hesitation.
+
+As it happens, the college boasts a small laboratory, containing
+just what is strictly indispensable: a receiver, a dozen glass
+balloons, a few tubes and a niggardly assortment of chemicals.
+That will do, if I can have the run of it.  But the laboratory is a
+sanctum reserved for the use of the sixth form.  No one sets foot
+in it except the professor and his pupils preparing for their
+degree.  For me, the outsider, to enter that tabernacle with my
+band of young imps would be most unseemly; the rightful occupant
+would never think of allowing it.  I feel it myself: elementary
+teaching dare not aspire to such familiarity with the higher
+culture.  Very well, we will not go there, so long as they will
+lend me the things.
+
+I confide my plan to the principal, the supreme dispenser of those
+riches.  He is a classics man, knows hardly anything of science, at
+that time held in no great esteem, and he does not quite understand
+the object of my request.  I humbly insist and exert my powers of
+persuasion.  I discreetly emphasize the real point of the matter.
+My group of pupils is a numerous one.  It takes more meals at the
+schoolhouse--the real concern of a principal--than any other
+section of the college.  This group must be encouraged, lured on,
+increased if possible.  The prospect of disposing of a few more
+platefuls of soup wins the battle for me; my request is granted.
+Poor science! All that diplomacy to gain your entrance among the
+despised ones, who have not been nourished on Cicero and
+Demosthenes!
+
+I am authorized to move, once a week, the material required for my
+ambitious plans.  From the first floor, the sacred dwelling of the
+scientific things, I shall take them down to a sort of cellar where
+I give my lessons.  The troublesome part is the pneumatic trough.
+It has to be emptied before it is carried downstairs and to be
+filled again afterwards.  A day scholar, a zealous acolyte, hurries
+over his dinner and comes to lend me a hand an hour or two before
+the class begins.  We effect the move between us.
+
+What I am after is oxygen, the gas which I once saw fail so
+lamentably.  I thought it all out at my leisure, with the help of a
+book.  I will do this, I will do that, I will go to work in this or
+the other fashion.  Above all, we will run no risks, perhaps of
+blinding ourselves; for it is once more a question of heating
+manganese dioxide with sulfuric acid.  I am filled with misgivings
+at the recollection of my old school fellow yelling like mad.  Who
+cares?  Let us try for all that: fortune favors the brave! Besides,
+we will make one prudent condition, from which I shall never
+depart: no one but myself shall come near the table.  If an
+accident happen, I shall be the only one to suffer; and, in my
+opinion, it is worth a burn or two to make acquaintance with
+oxygen.
+
+Two o'clock strikes; and my pupils enter the classroom.  I
+purposely exaggerate the likelihood of danger.  They are all to
+stay on their benches and not stir.  This is agreed.  I have plenty
+of elbow room.  There is no one by me, except my acolyte, standing
+by my side, ready to help me when the time comes.  The others look
+on in profound silence, reverent towards the unknown.
+
+Soon the gaseous bubbles come "gloo-glooing" through the water in
+the bell jar.  Can it be my gas?  My heart beats with excitement.
+Can I have succeeded without any trouble at the first attempt?  We
+will see.  A candle blown out that moment and still retaining a red
+tip to its wick is lowered by a wire into a small test jar filled
+with my product.  Capital! The candle lights with a little
+explosion and burns with extraordinary brilliancy.  It is oxygen
+right enough.
+
+The moment is a solemn one.  My audience is astounded and so am I,
+but more at my own success than at the relighted candle.  A puff of
+vainglory rises to my brow; I feel the fire of enthusiasm run
+through my veins.  But I say nothing of these inner sensations.
+Before the boys' eyes, the master must appear an old hand at the
+things he teaches.  What would the young rascals think of me if I
+allowed them to suspect my surprise, if they knew that I myself am
+beholding the marvelous subject of my demonstration for the first
+time in my life?  I should lose their confidence, I should sink to
+the level of a mere pupil.
+
+Sursum corda! Let us go on as if chemistry were a familiar thing to
+me.  It is the turn of the steel ribbon, an old watch spring rolled
+corkscrew fashion and furnished with a bit of tinder.  With this
+simple lighted bait, the steel should take fire in a jar filled
+with my gas.  And it does burn; it becomes a splendid firework,
+with cracklings and a blaze of sparks and a cloud of rust that
+tarnishes the jar.  From the end of the fiery coil a red drop
+breaks off at intervals, shoots quivering through the layer of
+water left at the bottom of the vessel and embeds itself in the
+glass which has suddenly grown soft.  This metallic tear, with its
+indomitable heat, makes every one of us shudder.  All stamp and
+cheer and applaud.  The timid ones place their hands before their
+faces and dare not look except through their fingers.  My audience
+exults; and I myself triumph.  Ha, my friends, isn't it grand, this
+chemistry!
+
+All of us have red letter days in our lives.  Some, the practical
+men, have been successful in business; they have made money and
+hold their heads high in consequence.  Others, the thinkers, have
+gained ideas; they have opened a new account in the ledger of
+nature and they silently taste the hallowed joys of truth.  One of
+my great days was that of my first acquaintance with oxygen.  On
+that day, when my class was over and all the materials put back in
+their place, I felt myself grow several inches taller.  An
+untrained workman, I had shown, with complete success, that which
+was unknown to me a couple of hours before.  No accident whatever,
+not even the least stain of acid.
+
+It is, therefore, not so difficult nor so dangerous as the pitiful
+finish of the Saint Martial lesson might have led me to believe.
+With a vigilant eye and a little prudence, I shall be able to
+continue.  The prospect is enchanting.
+
+And so, in due season, comes hydrogen, carefully contemplated in my
+reading, seen and reseen with the eye of the mind before being seen
+with the eyes of the body.  I delight my little rascals by making
+the hydrogen flame sing in a glass tube, which trickles with the
+drops of water resulting from the combustion; I make them jump with
+the explosions of the thunderous mixture.  Later, I show them, with
+the same invariable success, the splendors of phosphorus, the
+violent powers of chlorine, the loathsome smells of sulfur, the
+metamorphoses of carbon and so on.  In short, in a series of
+lessons, the principal nonmetallic elements and their compounds are
+passed in review during the course of the year.
+
+The thing was bruited abroad.  Fresh pupils came to me, attracted
+by the marvels of the school.  Additional places were laid in the
+dining hall; and the principal, who was more interested in the
+profits on his beans and bacon than in chemistry, congratulated me
+on this accession of boarders.  I was fairly started.  Time and an
+indomitable will would do the rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX  INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY
+
+Everything happens sooner or later.  When, through the low windows
+overlooking the garden of the school, my eye glanced at the
+laboratory, where the madder vats were steaming; when, in the
+sanctuary itself, I was present, by way of a first and last
+chemistry lesson, at the explosion of the retort of sulfuric acid
+that nearly disfigured every one of us, I was far indeed from
+suspecting the part which I was destined to play under that same
+vaulted roof.  Had a prophet foretold that I should one day succeed
+the master, never would I have believed him.  Time works these
+surprises for us.
+
+Stones would have theirs too, if anything were able to astonish
+them.  The Saint Martial building was originally a church; it is a
+protestant place of worship now.  Men used to pray there in Latin;
+today they pray in French.  In the intervening period, it was for
+some years in the service of science, the noble orison that
+dispels the darkness.  What has the future in store for it?  Like
+many another in the ringing city, to use Rabelais' epithet, will
+it become a home for the fuller's teasels, a warehouse for scrap
+iron, a carrier's stable?  Who knows?  Stones have their destinies
+no less unexpected than ours.
+
+When I took possession of it as a laboratory for the municipal
+course of lectures, the nave remained as it was at the time of my
+former short and disastrous visit.  To the right, on the wall, a
+number of black stains struck the eye.  It was as though a madman's
+hand, armed with the inkpot, had smashed its fragile projectile at
+that spot.  I recognized the stains at once.  They were the marks
+of the corrosive which the retort had splashed at our heads.  Since
+those days of long ago, no one had thought fit to hide them under a
+coat of whitewash.  So much the better: they will serve me as
+excellent counselors.  Always before my eyes, at every lesson, they
+will speak to me incessantly of prudence.
+
+For all its attractions, however, chemistry did not make me forget
+a long cherished plan well suited to my tastes, that of teaching
+natural history at a university.  Now, one day, at the grammar
+school, I had a visit from a chief inspector which was not of an
+encouraging nature.  My colleagues used to call him the Crocodile.
+Perhaps he had given them a rough time in the course of his
+inspections.  For all his boorish ways, he was an excellent man at
+heart.  I owe him for a piece of advice which greatly influenced my
+future studies.
+
+That day, he suddenly appeared, alone, in the schoolroom, where I
+was taking a class in geometrical drawing.  I must explain that, at
+this time, to eke out my ridiculous salary and, at all costs, to
+provide a living for myself and my large family, I was a mighty
+pluralist, both inside the college and out.  At the college in
+particular, after two hours of physics, chemistry or natural
+history, came, without respite, another two hours' lesson, in which
+I taught the boys how to make a projection in descriptive geometry,
+how to draw a geodetic plane, a curve of any kind whose law of
+generation is known to us.  This was called graphics.
+
+The sudden irruption of the dread personage causes me no great
+flurry.  Twelve o'clock strikes, the pupils go out and we are left
+alone.  I know him to be a geometrician.  The transcendental curve,
+perfectly drawn, may work upon his gentler mood.  I happen to have
+in my portfolio the very thing to please him.  Fortune serves me
+well in this special circumstance.  Among my boys, there is one
+who, though a regular dunce at everything else, is a first rate
+hand with the square, the compass and the drawing pen: a deft-
+fingered numskull, in short.
+
+With the aid of a system of tangents of which I first showed him
+the rule and the method of construction, my artist has obtained the
+ordinary cycloid, followed by the interior and the exterior
+epicycloid and, lastly, the same curves both lengthened and
+shortened.  His drawings are admirable Spider's webs, encircling
+the cunning curve in their net.  The draftsmanship is so accurate
+that it is easy to deduce from it beautiful theorems, which would
+be very laborious to work out by the calculus.
+
+I submit the geometrical masterpieces to my chief inspector, who is
+himself said to be smitten with geometry.  I modestly describe the
+method of construction, I call his attention to the fine deductions
+which the drawing enables one to make.  It is labor lost: he gives
+but a heedless glance at my sheets and flings each on the table as
+I hand it to him.
+
+'Alas!' said I to myself.  'There is a storm brewing; the cycloid
+won't save you; it's your turn for a bite from the Crocodile!'
+
+Not a bit of it.  Behold the bugbear growing genial.  He sits down
+on a bench, with one leg here, another there, invites me to take a
+seat by his side and, in a moment, we are discussing graphics.
+Then, bluntly: 'Have you any money? ' he asks.
+
+Astounded at this strange question, I answer with a smile.
+
+'Don't be afraid,' he says.  'Confide in me.  I'm asking you in
+your own interest.  Have you any capital? '
+
+'I have no reason to be ashamed of my poverty, monsieur
+l'inspecteur general.  I frankly admit, I possess nothing; my means
+are limited to my modest salary.'
+
+A frown greets my answer; and I hear, spoken in an undertone, as
+though my confessor were talking to himself: 'That's sad, that's
+really very sad.'
+
+Astonished to find my penury treated as sad, I ask for an
+explanation: I was not accustomed to this solicitude on the part of
+my superiors.
+
+ 'Why, yes, it's a great pity,' continues the man reputed so
+terrible.  'I have read your articles in the Annales des sciences
+naturelles.  You have an observant mind, a taste for research, a
+lively style and a ready pen.  You would have made a capital
+university professor.'
+
+'But that's just what I'm aiming at!'
+
+'Give up the idea.'
+
+'Haven't I the necessary attainment? '
+
+'Yes, you have; but you have no capital.' The great obstacle stands
+revealed to me: woe to the poor in pocket! University teaching
+demands a private income.  Be as ordinary, as commonplace as you
+please, but, above all, possess the coin that lets you cut a dash.
+That is the main thing; the rest is a secondary condition.
+
+And the worthy man tells me what poverty in a frock coat means.
+Though less of a pauper than I, he has known the mortification of
+it; he describes it to me, excitedly, in all its bitterness.  I
+listen to him with an aching heart; I see the refuge which was to
+shelter my future crumbling before my eyes: 'You have done me a
+great service, sir,' I answered.  'You put an end to my hesitation.
+For the moment, I give up my plan.  I will first see if it is
+possible to earn the small fortune which I shall need if I am to
+teach in a decent manner.'
+
+Thereupon we exchanged a friendly grip of the hand and parted.  I
+never saw him again.  His fatherly arguments had soon convinced me:
+I was prepared to hear the blunt truth.  A few months earlier, I
+had received my nomination as an assistant lecturer in zoology at
+the university of Poitiers.  They offered me a ridiculous salary.
+After paying the costs of moving, I should have had hardly three
+francs a day left; and, on this income, I had to keep my family,
+numbering seven in all.  I hastened to decline the very great
+honor.
+
+No, science ought not to practice these jests.  If we humble
+persons are of use to her, she should at least enable us to live.
+If she can't do that, then let her leave us to break stones on the
+highway.  Oh, yes, I was prepared for the truth when that honest
+fellow talked to me of frock coated poverty! I am telling the story
+of a not very distant past.  Since then, things have improved
+considerably; but, when the pear was properly ripened, I was no
+longer of an age to pick it.
+
+And what was I to do now, to overcome the difficulty mentioned by
+my inspector and confirmed by my personal experience?  I would take
+up industrial chemistry.  The municipal lectures at Saint Martial
+placed a spacious and fairly well-equipped laboratory at my
+disposal.  Why not make the most of it?
+
+The chief manufacture of Avignon was madder.  The farmer supplied
+the raw material to the factories, where it was turned into purer
+and more concentrated products.  My predecessor had gone in for it
+and done well by it, so people said.  I would follow in his
+footsteps and use the vats and furnaces, the expensive plant which
+I had inherited.  So to work.
+
+What should I set myself to produce?  I proposed to extract the
+coloring substance, alizarin, to separate it from the other matters
+found with it in the root, to obtain it in the pure state and in a
+form that allowed of the direct printing of the stuffs, a much
+quicker and more artistic method than the old dyeing process.
+
+Nothing could be simpler than this problem, once the solution was
+known; but how tremendously obscure while it had still to be
+solved! I dare not call to mind all the imagination and patience
+spent upon endless endeavors which nothing, not even the madness of
+them, discouraged.  What mighty meditations in the somber church!
+What glowing dreams, soon to be followed by sore disappointment,
+when experiment spoke the last word and upset the scaffolding of my
+plans.  Stubborn as the slave of old amassing a peculium for his
+enfranchisement, I used to reply to the check of yesterday by the
+fresh attempt of tomorrow, often as faulty as the others, sometimes
+the richer by an improvement, and I went on indefatigably, for I
+too cherished the indomitable ambition to set myself free.
+
+Should I succeed?  Perhaps so.  I at last had a satisfactory
+answer.  I obtained, in a cheap and practical fashion, the pure
+coloring matter, concentrated in a small volume and excellent for
+both printing and dyeing.  One of my friends took up my process on
+a large scale in his works; a few calico factories adopted the
+produce and expressed themselves delighted with it.  The future
+smiled at last; a pink rift opened in my gray sky.  I should
+possess the modest fortune without which I must deny myself the
+pleasure of teaching in a university.  Freed of the torturing
+anxiety about my daily bread, I should be able to live at ease
+among my insects.
+
+In the midst of the joys of seeing these problems solved by
+chemistry, yet another ray of sunshine was reserved for me, adding
+its gladness to that of my success.  Let us go back a couple of
+years.  The chief inspectors visited our grammar school.  These
+personages travel in pairs: one attends to literature, the other to
+science.  When the inspection was over and the books checked, the
+staff was summoned to the principal's drawing room, to receive the
+parting admonitions of the two luminaries.  The man of science
+began.  I should be sadly put to it to remember what he said.  It
+was cold professional prose, made up of soulless words which the
+hearer forgot once the speaker's back was turned, words merely
+boring to both.  I had heard enough of these chilly sermons in my
+time; one more of them could not hope to make an impression on me.
+
+The inspector in literature spoke next.  At the first words which
+he uttered, I said to myself: 'Oho! This is a very different
+business!'
+
+The speech was alive and vigorous and full of images; indifferent
+to scholastic commonplaces, the ideas soared, hovering gently in
+the serene heights of a kindly philosophy.  This time, I listened
+with pleasure; I even felt stirred.  Here was no official homily:
+it was full of impassioned zeal, of words that carried you with
+them, uttered by an honest man accomplished in the art of speaking,
+an orator in the true sense of the word.  In all my school
+experience, I had never had such a treat.
+
+When the meeting broke up, my heart beat faster than usual: 'What a
+pity,' I thought, 'that my side, the science side, cannot bring me
+into contact, some day, with that inspector! It seems to me that we
+should become great friends.'
+
+I inquired his name of my colleagues, who were always better
+informed than I.  They told me it was Victor Duruy.
+
+Well, one day, two years later, as I was looking after my Saint
+Martial laboratory in the midst of the steam from my vats, with my
+hands the color of boiled lobster claws from constant dipping in
+the indelible red of my dyes, there walked in, unexpectedly, a
+person whose features straightway seemed familiar.  I was right, it
+was the very man, the chief inspector whose speech had once stirred
+me.  M.  Duruy was now minister of public instruction.  He was
+styled, 'Your excellency;' and this style, usually an empty
+formula, was well deserved in the present case, for our new
+minister excelled in his exalted functions.  We all held him in
+high esteem.  He was the workers' minister, the man for the humble
+toiler.
+
+'I want to spend my last half-hour at Avignon with you,' said my
+visitor, with a smile.  'That will be a relief from the official
+bowing and scraping.'
+
+Overcome by the honor paid me, I apologized for my costume--I was
+in my shirt sleeves--and especially for my lobster claws, which I
+had tried, for a moment, to hide behind my back.
+
+'You have nothing to apologize for.  I came to see the worker.  The
+working man never looks better than in his overall, with the marks
+of his trade on him.  Let us have a talk.  What are you doing just
+now? '
+
+I explained, in a few words, the object of my researches; I showed
+my product; I executed under the minister's eyes a little attempt
+at printing in madder red.  The success of the experiment and the
+simplicity of my apparatus, in which an evaporating dish,
+maintained at boiling point under a glass funnel, took the place of
+a steam chamber, caused him some surprise.
+
+'I will help you,' he said.  'What do you want for your laboratory?
+'
+
+'Why, nothing, monsieur le ministre, nothing! With a little
+application, the plant I have is ample.'
+
+'What, nothing! You are unique there! The others overwhelm me with
+requests; their laboratories are never well enough supplied.  And
+you, poor as you are, refuse my offers!'
+
+'No, there is one thing which I will accept.'
+
+'What is that? '
+
+'The signal honor of shaking you by the hand.'
+
+'There you are, my friend, with all my heart.  But that's not
+enough.  What else do you want? '
+
+'The Paris Jardin des Plantes is under your control.  Should a
+crocodile die, let them keep the hide for me.  I will stuff it with
+straw and hang it from the ceiling.  Thus adorned, my workshop will
+rival the wizard's cave.'
+
+The minister cast his eyes round the nave and glanced up at the
+Gothic vault: 'Yes, it would look very well.' And he gave a laugh
+at my sally.  'I now know you as a chemist,' he continued.  'I knew
+you already as a naturalist and a writer.  I have heard about your
+little animals.  I am sorry that I shall have to leave without
+seeing them.  They must wait for another occasion.  My train will
+be starting presently.  Walk with me to the station, will you?  We
+shall be alone and we can chat a bit more on the way.'
+
+We strolled along, discussing entomology and madder.  My shyness
+had disappeared.  The self sufficiency of a fool would have left me
+dumb; the fine frankness of a lofty mind put me at my ease.  I told
+him of my experiments in natural history, of my plans for a
+professorship, of my fight with harsh fate, my hopes and fears.  He
+encouraged me, spoke to me of a better future.  We reached the
+station and walked up and down outside, talking away delightfully.
+
+A poor old woman passed, all in rags, her back bent by age and
+years of work in the fields.  She furtively put out her hand for
+alms.  Duruy felt in his waistcoat, found a two franc piece and
+placed it in the outstretched hand; I wanted to add a couple of
+sous as my contribution, but my pockets were empty, as usual.  I
+went to the beggar woman and whispered in her ear: 'Do you know who
+gave you that?  It's the emperor's minister.
+
+The poor woman started; and her astounded eyes wandered from the
+open-handed swell to the piece of silver and from the piece of
+silver to the open-handed swell.  What a surprise! What a windfall!
+
+'Que lou bon Dieu ie done longo vido e santa, pecaire!' she said,
+in her cracked voice.
+
+And, curtseying and nodding, she withdrew, still staring at the
+coin in the palm of her hand.
+
+'What did she say? ' asked Duruy.
+
+'She wished you long life and health.'
+'And pecaire? '
+
+'Pecaire is a poem in itself: it sums up all the gentler passions.'
+
+And I myself mentally repeated the artless vow.  The man who stops
+so kindly when a beggar puts out her hand has something better in
+his soul than the mere qualities that go to make a minister.
+
+We entered the station, still alone, as promised, and I quite
+without misgivings.  Had I but foreseen what was going to happen,
+how I should have hastened to take my leave! Little by little, a
+group formed in front of us.  It was too late to fly; I had to
+screw up my courage.  Came the general of division and his
+officers, came the prefect and his secretary, the mayor and his
+deputy, the school inspector and the pick of the staff.  The
+minister faced the ceremonial semicircle.  I stood next to him.  A
+crowd on one side, we two on the other.  Followed the regulation
+spinal contortions, the empty obeisances which my dear Duruy had
+come to my laboratory to forget.  When bowing to St.  Roch, in his
+corner niche, the worshipper at the same time salutes the saint's
+humble companion.  I was something like St.  Roch's dog in the
+presence of those honors which did not concern me.  I stood and
+looked on, with my awful red hands concealed behind my back, under
+the broad brim of my felt hat.
+
+After the official compliments had been exchanged, the conversation
+began to languish; and the minister seized my right hand and gently
+drew it from the mysterious recesses of my wide awake.
+
+'Why don't you show those gentlemen your hands? ' he said.  'Most
+people would be proud of them.'
+
+ 'Workman's hands,' said the prefect's secretary.  'Regular
+workman's hands.'
+
+The general, almost scandalized at seeing me in such distinguished
+company, added: 'Hands of a dyer and cleaner.'
+
+'Yes, workman's hands,' retorted the minister, 'and I wish you many
+like them.  Believe me, they will do much to help the chief
+industry of your city.  Skilled as they are in chemical work, they
+are equally capable of wielding the pen, the pencil, the scalpel
+and the lens.  As you here seem unaware of it, I am delighted to
+inform you.'
+
+This time, I should have liked the ground to open and swallow me
+up.  Fortunately, the bell rang for the train to start.  I said
+goodbye to the minister and, hurriedly taking to flight, left him
+laughing at the trick which he had played me.
+
+The incident was noised about, could not help being so, for the
+peristyle of a railway station keeps no secrets.  I then learned to
+what annoyances the shadow of the great exposes us.  I was looked
+upon as an influential person, having the favor of the gods at my
+disposal.  Place hunters and canvassers tormented me.  One wanted a
+license to sell tobacco and stamps, another a scholarship for his
+son, another an increase of his pension.  I had only to ask and I
+should obtain, said they.
+
+O simple people, what an illusion was yours! You could not have hit
+upon a worse intermediary.  I figuring as a postulant! I have many
+faults, I admit, but that is certainly not one of them.  I got rid
+of the importunate people as best I could, though they were utterly
+unable to fathom my reserve.  What would they have said had they
+known of the minister's offers with regard to my laboratory and my
+jesting reply, in which I asked for a crocodile skin to hang from
+my ceiling! They would have taken me for an idiot.
+
+Six months elapsed; and I received a letter summoning me to call
+upon the minister at his office.  I suspected a proposal to promote
+me to a more important grammar school and wrote begging that I
+might be left where I was, among my vats and my insects.  A second
+letter arrived, more pressing than the first and signed by the
+minister's own hand.  This letter said: 'Come at once, or I shall
+send my gendarmes to fetch you.'
+
+There was no way out of it.  Twenty-four hours later, I was in M.
+Duruy's room.  He welcomed me with exquisite cordiality, gave me
+his hand and, taking up a number of the Moniteur: 'Read that,' he
+said.  'You refused my chemical apparatus; but you won't refuse
+this.
+
+I looked at the line to which his finger pointed.  I read my name
+in the list of the Legion of Honor.  Quite stupid with surprise, I
+stammered the first words of thanks that entered my head.
+
+'Come here,' said he, 'and let me give you the accolade.  I will be
+your sponsor.  You will like the ceremony all the better if it is
+held in private, between you and me: I know you!'
+
+He pinned the red ribbon to my coat, kissed me on both cheeks, made
+me telegraph the great event to my family.  What a morning, spent
+with that good man!
+
+I well know the vanity of decorative ribbonry and tinware,
+especially when, as too often happens, intrigue degrades the honor
+conferred; but, coming as it did, that bit of ribbon is precious to
+me.  It is a relic, not an object for show.  I keep it religiously
+in a drawer.
+
+There was a parcel of big books on the tab1e a collection of the
+reports on the progress of science drawn up for the International
+Exhibition of 1867, which had just closed.
+
+'Those books are for you,' continued the minister.  'Take them with
+you.  You can look through them at your leisure: they may interest
+you.  There is something about your insects in them.  You're to
+have this too: it will pay for your journey.  The trip which I made
+you take must not be at your own expense.  If there is anything
+over, spend it on your laboratory.'
+
+And he handed me a roll of twelve hundred francs.  In vain I
+refused, remarking that my journey was not so burdensome as all
+that; besides, his embrace and his bit of ribbon were of
+inestimable value compared with my disbursements.  He insisted:
+'Take it,' he said, 'or I shall be very angry.  There's something
+else: you must come to the emperor's with me tomorrow, to the
+reception of the learned societies.'
+
+Seeing me greatly perplexed and as though demoralized by the
+prospect of an imperial interview: 'Don't try to escape me,' he
+said, 'or look out for the gendarmes of my letter! You saw the
+fellows in the bearskin caps on your way up.  Mind you don't fall
+into their hands.  In any case, lest you should be tempted to run
+away, we will go to the Tuileries together, in my carriage.'
+
+Things happened as he wished.  The next day, in the minister's
+company, I was ushered into a little drawing room at the Tuileries
+by chamberlains in knee breeches and silver-buckled shoes.  They
+were queer people to look at.  Their uniforms and their stiff gait
+gave them the appearance, in my eyes, of beetles who, by way of
+wing cases, wore a great, gold-laced dress coat, with a key in the
+small of the back.  There were already a score of persons from all
+parts waiting in the room.  These included geographical explorers,
+botanists, geologists, antiquaries, archeologists, collectors of
+prehistoric flints, in short, the usual representatives of
+provincial scientific life.
+
+The emperor entered, very simply dressed, with no parade about him
+beyond a wide, red, watered silk ribbon across his chest.  No sign
+of majesty, an ordinary man, round and plump, with a large
+moustache and a pair of half-closed, drowsy eyelids.  He moved from
+one to the other, talking to each of us for a moment as the
+minister mentioned our names and the nature of our occupations.  He
+showed a fair amount of information as he changed his subject from
+the ice floes of Spitzbergen to the dunes of Gascony, from a
+Carlovingian charter to the flora of the Sahara, from the progress
+in beetroot growing to Caesar's trenches before Alesia.  When my
+turn came, he questioned me upon the hypermetamorphosis of the
+Meloidae [a beetle family including the oil beetle and the Spanish
+fly], my last essay in entomology.  I answered as best I could,
+floundering a little in the proper mode of address, mixing up the
+everyday monsieur with sire, a word whose use was so entirely new
+to me.  I passed through the dread straits and others succeeded me.
+My five minutes' conversation with an imperial majesty was, they
+tell me, a most distinguished honor.  I am quite ready to believe
+them, but I never had a desire to repeat it.
+
+The reception came to an end, bows were exchanged and we were
+dismissed.  A luncheon awaited us at the minister's house.  I sat
+on his right, not a little embarrassed by the privilege; on his
+left was a physiologist of great renown.  Like the others, I spoke
+of all manner of things, including even Avignon Bridge.  Duruy's
+son, sitting opposite me, chaffed me pleasantly about the famous
+bridge on which everybody dances; he smiled at my impatience to get
+back to the thyme-scented hills and the gray olive yards rich in
+Grasshoppers.
+
+'What!' said his father.  'Won't you visit our museums, our
+collections?  There are some very interesting things there.'
+
+'I know, monsieur le ministre, but I shall find better things,
+things more to my taste, in the incomparable museum of the fields.'
+
+'Then what do you propose to do? '
+
+'I propose to go back tomorrow.
+
+I did go back, I had had enough of Paris: never had I felt such
+tortures of loneliness as in that immense whirl of humanity.  To
+get away, to get away was my one idea.
+
+Once home among my family, I felt a mighty load off my mind and a
+great joy in my heart, where rang a peal of bells proclaiming the
+delights of my approaching emancipation.  Little by little, the
+factory that was to set me free rose skywards, full of promises.
+Yes, I should possess the modest income which would crown my
+ambition by allowing me to descant on animals and plants in a
+university chair.
+
+ 'Well, no,' said Fate, 'you shall not acquire the freedman's
+peculium; you shall remain a slave, dragging your chain behind you;
+your peal of bells rings false!'
+
+Hardly was the factory in full swing when a piece of news was
+bruited, at first a vague rumor, an echo of probabilities rather
+than certainties, and then a positive statement leaving no room for
+doubt.  Chemistry had obtained the madder dye by artificial means;
+thanks to a laboratory concoction, it was utterly overthrowing the
+agriculture and industries of my district.  This result, while
+destroying my work and my hopes, did not surprise me unduly.  I
+myself had toyed with the problem of artificial alizarin and I knew
+enough about it to foresee that, in no very distant future, the
+work of the chemist's retort would take the place of the work of
+the fields.
+
+It was finished; my hopes were dashed to the ground.  What to do
+next?  Let us change our lever and begin to roll Sisyphus' stone
+once more.  Let us try to draw from the ink pot what the madder vat
+declines to yield.  Laboremus!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre
+
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