foster mother; they are careful not to tear her skin, so that the
vessel may keep its liquid good to the last.

The wholesomeness of the victuals is not the only condition
imposed: I find a second, which is no less essential. The
substance of the fostering larva must be sufficiently fluid to
ooze through the unbroken skin under the action of the sucker.
Well, the necessary fluidity is realized as the time of the
metamorphosis draws near. When they wished Medea to restore
Pelias to the vigor of youth, his daughters cut the old king's
body to pieces and boiled it in a cauldron, for there can be no
new existence without a prior dissolution. We must pull down
before we can rebuild; the analysis of death is the first step
towards the synthesis of life. The substance of the grub that is
to be transformed into a bee begins, therefore, by disintegrating
and dissolving into a fluid broth. The materials of the future
insect are obtained by a general recasting. Even as the founder
puts his old bronzes into the melting pot in order afterwards to
cast them in a mould whence the metal will issue in a different
shape, so life liquefies the grub, a mere digesting machine, now
thrown aside, and out of its running matter produces the perfect
insect, bee, butterfly or beetle, the final manifestation of the
living creature.

Let us open a Chalicodoma grub under the microscope, during the
period of torpor. Its contents consists almost entirely of a
liquid broth, in which swim numberless oily globules and a fine
dust of uric acid, a sort of off-throw of the oxidized tissues. A
flowing thing, shapeless and nameless, is all that the animal is,
if we add abundant ramified air ducts, some nervous filaments and,