length, between the twelfth and the fifteenth day, all that
remains of the larva of the mason bee is a white granule, hardly
as large as a pin's head.

This granule is the water bottle drained to the last drop, is the
nurse's breast emptied of all its contents. I soften the meager
remnant in water; then, keeping it still immersed, I blow into it
through an extremely attenuated glass tube. The skin fills out,
distends and resumes the shape of the larva, without there being
an outlet anywhere for the compressed air. It is intact,
therefore; it is free of any perforation, which would be forthwith
revealed under the water by an escape of gas. And so, under the
Anthrax' cupping glass, the oily bottle has been drained by a
simple transpiration through the membrane; the substance of the
nurse grub has been transfused into the body of the nursling by a
process akin to that known in physics as endosmosis. What should
we say to a method of being suckled by the mere application of the
mouth to a teatless breast? What we see here may be compared with
that: without any outlet, the milk of the Chalicodoma grub passes
into the stomach of the Anthrax' larva.

Is it really an instance of endosmosis? Might it not rather be
atmospheric pressure that stimulates the flow of nourishing fluids
and distils them into the Anthrax' cup-shaped mouth, working, in
order to create a vacuum. almost like the suckers of the
Cuttlefish? All this is possible, but I shall refrain from
deciding, preferring to assign a large share to the unknown in
this extraordinary method of nutrition. It ought, I think, to
provide physiologists with a field of research in which new views
on the hydrodynamics of live fluids might well be gleaned; and