grub; but it also has its dangers everywhere. The Anthrax escapes
the peril only on the condition of being, so to speak, muzzled.
His mouth is not a fierce forceps that tears asunder; it is a
sucker that exhausts but does not wound. Thus restrained by this
safety appliance, which changes the bite into a kiss, the grub has
fresh victuals until it has finished growing, although it knows
nothing of the rules of methodical consumption at a fixed point
and in a predetermined direction.

The considerations which I have set forth seem to me strictly
logical: the Anthrax, owing to the very fact that he is free to
take his nourishment where he pleases on the body of the fostering
larva, must, for his own protection, be made incapable of opening
his victim's body. I am so utterly convinced of this harmonious
relation between the eater and the eaten that I do not hesitate to
set it up as a principle. I will therefore say this: whenever the
egg of any kind of insect is not fastened to the larva destined
for its food, the young grub, free to select the attacking point
and to change it at will, is as it were muzzled and consumes its
provisions by a sort of suction, without inflicting any
appreciable wound. This restriction is essential to the
maintenance of the victuals in good condition. My principle is
already supported by examples many and various, whose depositions
are all to the same effect. The witnesses include, after the
Anthrax, the Leucospis [a parasitic insect] and his rivals, whose
evidence we shall hear presently; the Ephialtes mediator [an
Ichneumon fly], who feeds, in the dry brambles, on the larva of
the Black Psen [a digger wasp]; the Myodites, that strange, fly-
shaped beetle whose grub consumes the larva of the cockchafer.
All--flies, ichneumon flies and beetles--scrupulously spare their