under the skin, a thin layer of muscular fibers. A condition of
this kind accounts for a fatty transpiration through the skin when
the Anthrax' sucker is at work. At any other time, when the larva
is in the active period or else when the insect has reached the
perfect stage, the firmness of the tissues would resist the
transfusion and the suckling of the Anthrax would become a
difficult matter, or even impossible. In point of fact, I find
the grub of the fly established, in the vast majority of cases, on
the sleeping larva and sometimes, but rarely, on the pupa. Never
do I see it on the vigorous larva eating its honey; and hardly
ever on the insect brought to perfection, as we find it enclosed
in its cell all through the autumn and winter. And we can say the
same of the other grub eaters that drain their victims without
wounding them: all are engaged in their death dealing work during
the period of torpor, when the tissues are fluidified. They empty
their patient, who has become a bag of running grease with a
diffused life; but not one, among those I know, reaches the
Anthrax' perfection in the art of extraction.

Nor can any be compared with the Anthrax as regards the means
brought into play in order to leave the cell. These others, when
they become perfect insects, have implements for sapping and
demolishing, stout mandibles, capable of digging the ground, of
pulling down clay partition walls and even of reducing the mason
bee's tough cement to powder. The Anthrax, in her final form, has
nothing like this. Her mouth is a short, soft proboscis, good at
most for soberly licking the sugary exudations of the flowers; her
slim legs are so feeble that to move a grain of sand were an
excessive task for them, enough to strain every joint; her great,
stiff wings, which must remain full spread, do not allow her to