he 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