wriggling of body and grinding of mandibles. The position would
have ceased to be tenable and the intruder would have perished.
But at this hour all danger has disappeared. Enclosed in its
silken tent, the larva is seized with the lethargy that precedes
the metamorphosis. Its condition is not death, but neither is it
life. It is an intermediary condition; it is almost the latent
vitality of grain or egg. Therefore there is no sign of
irritation on the larva's part under the needle with which I stir
it and still less under the sucker of the Anthrax grub, which is
able to drain the affluent breast in perfect safety.

This lack of resistance, induced by the torpor of the
transformation, appears to me necessary, in view of the weakness
of the nursling as it leaves the egg, whenever the mother is
herself incapable of depriving the victim of the power of self
defense. And so the nonparalyzed larvae are attacked during the
period of the nymphosis. We shall soon see other instances of
this.

Motionless though it be, the Chalicodoma grub is none the less
alive. The primrose tint and the glossy skin are unequivocal
signs of health: Were it really dead, it would, in less than
twenty-four hours, turn a dirty brown and, soon after, decompose
into a fluid putrescence. Now here is the marvelous thing: during
the fortnight, roughly, that the Anthrax' meal lasts, the butter
color of the larva, an unfailing symptom of the presence of life,
continues unaltered and does not change into brown, the sign of
putrefaction, until hardly anything remains; and even then the
brown hue is often absent. As a rule, the look of live flesh is
preserved until the final pellet, formed of the skin, the sole