hom I expected to see was beyond the limits of the possible.
In the middle of May, a month after the operation on the caterpillars,
my three chrysalids, still incomplete underneath, in the three or four
middle segments, withered and at last went mouldy. Is the evidence
conclusive this time? Who can conceive such a silly idea as that a prey
really dead, a corpse preserved from putrefaction by an antiseptic,
could contain what is perhaps the most delicate work of life, the
development of the grub into the perfect insect?

The truth must be driven into recalcitrant brains with great blows of
the sledge-hammer. Let us once more employ this method. In September
I unearth from a heap of mould five Cetonia-grubs, paralysed by the
Two-banded Scolia and bearing on the abdomen the as yet unhatched egg of
the Wasp. I remove the eggs and install the helpless creatures on a bed
of leaf-mould with a glass cover. I propose to see how long I can keep
them fresh, able to move their mandibles and palpi. Already the victims
of various Hunting Wasps had instructed me on a similar matter; I knew
that traces of life linger for two, three, four weeks and longer. For
instance, I had seen the Ephippigers of the Languedocian Sphex continue
the waving of their antennae and their paralytic shudders for forty days
of artificial feeding by hand; and I used to wonder whether the more or
less early death of the other victims was not due to lack of nourishment
quite as much as to the operation which they had undergone. However,
the insect in its adult form usually has a very brief existence. It soon
dies, killed by the mere fact of living, without any other accident.
A larva is preferable for these investigations. Its constitution is
livelier, better able to support protracted abstinence, above all during
the winter torpor. The Cetonia-grub, a regular lump of bacon, nourished
by its own fat during the winter season, fulfils the needful conditions
to perfection. What will become of it, lying belly upwards on its bed of
leaf-mould? Will it survive the winter?

At the end of a month, three of my grubs turn brown and lapse into
rottenness. The other two keep perfectly fresh and move their antennae
and palpi at the touch of a straw. The cold weather comes and tickling
no longer elicits these signs of life. The inertia is complete;
nevertheless their appearance remains excellent, without a trace of the
brownish tinge, the sign of deterioration. At the return