carve its joint at random; and we have just seen the fatal
consequence of an ill-directed bite. It would perish--I have just proved
this in the most positive manner--it would perish, poisoned by its
victim, already dead and putrid.

To prosper, it would have, although a novice, to know what was permitted
and what forbidden in ransacking the creature's entrails; nor would
it be enough for the larva to be approximately in possession of this
difficult secret: it would be indispensable that it should possess the
secret completely, for a single bite, if delivered before the right
moment, would inevitably involve its own demise. The Scoliae of my
experiments are not novices, far from it: they are the descendants of
carvers that have practised their art since Scoliae first came into
the world; nevertheless they all perish from the decomposition of the
rations supplied, when I try to feed them on Ephippigers paralysed by
the Sphex. Very expert in the method of attacking the Cetonia, they do
not know how to set about the business of discreetly consuming a species
of game new to them. All that escapes them is a few details, for the
trade of an ogre fed on live flesh is familiar to them in its general
features; and these unheeded details are enough to turn their food into
poison. What, then, happened in the beginning, when the larva bit
for the first time into a luscious victim? The inexperienced creature
perished; of that there is not a shadow of doubt, unless we admit an
absurdity and imagine the larva of antiquity feeding upon those terrible
ptomaines which so swiftly kill its descendants to-day.

Nothing will ever make me admit and no unprejudiced mind can admit
that what was once food has become a horrible poison. What the larva of
antiquity ate was live flesh and not putrescence. Nor can it be admitted
that the chances of fortune can have led at the first trial to success
in a system of nourishment so full of pit-falls: fortuitous results are
preposterous amid so many complications. Either the feeding is strictly
methodical at the beginning, in conformity with the organic exigencies
of the prey devoured, and the Wasp established her race; or else it was
hesitating, without determined rules, and the Wasp left no successor. In
the first case we behold innate instinct; in the second acquired habit.

A strange acquisition, truly! An acquisition presumed to be made by
an impossible creature; an acquisition supposed to develop in