slip through a narrow passage; her delicate suit of downy velvet,
from which you take the bloom by merely breathing on it, could not
withstand the rough contact of the gallery of a mine. Unable
herself to enter the Mason bee's cell to lay her egg, she cannot
leave it either, when the time comes to free herself and appear in
broad daylight in her wedding dress. The larva, on its side, is
powerless to prepare the way for the coming flight. That buttery
little cylinder, owning no tools but a sucker so flimsy that it
barely arrives at substance and so small that it is almost a
geometrical point, is even weaker than the adult insect, which at
least flies and walks. The Mason bee's cell represents to it a
granite cave. How to get out? The problem would be insoluble to
those two incapables, if nothing else played its part.

Among insects, the nymph, or pupa, the transition stage between
the larval and the adult form, is generally a striking picture of
every weakness of a budding organism. A sort of mummy tight bound
in swaddling clothes, motionless and impassive, it awaits the
resurrection. Its tender tissues flow in every direction; its
limbs, transparent as crystal, are held fixed in their place,
along the side, lest a movement should disturb the exquisite
delicacy of the work in course of accomplishment. Even so, to
secure his recovery, is a broken boned patient held captive in the
surgeon's bandages. Absolute stillness is necessary in both
cases, lest they be crippled or even die.

Well, here, by a strange inversion that confuses all our views on
life, a Cyclopean task is laid upon the nymph of the Anthrax. It
is the nymph that has to toil, to strive, to exhaust itself in
efforts to burst the wall and open the way out. To the embryo