k 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
bli