reply to all my doubts. It was indeed, from the first, the grub of
the Anthrax, the cream-colored cylinder with the little button of a
head, followed by a hump. Applying its cupping glass to the mason
bee, the worm, without delay, began its meal, which lasts another
fortnight. The reader knows the rest.

Before taking leave of the animalcule, let us devote a few lines to
its instinct. It has just awakened to life under the fierce kisses
of the sun. The bare stone is its cradle, the rough clay its
welcomer, as it makes its entrance into the world, a poor thread of
scarce cohering albumen. But safety lies within; and behold the
atom of animated glair embarking on its struggle with the flint.
Obstinately, it sounds each pore; it slips in, crawls on, retreats,
begins again. The radical of the germinating seed is no more
persevering in its efforts to descend into the cool earth than is
the Anthrax grub in creeping into the lump of mortar. What
inspiration urges it towards its food at the bottom of the clod,
what compass guides it? What does it know of those depths, of what
lies therein or where? Nothing. What does the root know of the
earth's fruitfulness? Again nothing. Yet both make for the
nourishing spot. Theories are put forward, most learned theories,
introducing capillary action, osmosis and cellular imbibition, to
explain why the caulicle ascends and the radical descends. Shall
physical or chemical forces explain why the animalcule digs into
the hard clay? I bow profoundly, without understanding or even
trying to understand. The question is far above, our inane means.

The biography of the Anthrax is now complete, save for the details
relating to the egg, as yet unknown. In the vast majority of
insects subject to metamorphoses, the hatching yields the larval