t 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, ba