fore-end, upon the median line of the victim's abdomen, well to the rear of
the legs, near the beginning of the brown patch formed by the mass of food
under the skin.

I watch the hatching. The grub, still wearing upon its hinder parts the
delicate pellicle which it has just shed, is fixed to the spot to which the
egg itself adhered by its cephalic extremity. A striking spectacle, that of
the feeble creature, only this moment hatched, boring, for its first
mouthful, into the paunch of its enormous prey, which lies stretched upon
its back. The nascent tooth takes a day over the difficult task. Next
morning the skin has yielded; and I find the new-born larva with its head
plunged into a small, round, bleeding wound.

In size the grub is the same as the egg, whose dimensions I have just
given. Now the Cetonia-larva, to meet the Scolia's requirements, averages
thirty millimetres in length by nine in thickness (1.17 x .35 inch.--
Translator's Note.), whence follows that its bulk is six or seven hundred
times as great as that of the newly-hatched grub of the Scolia. Here
certainly is a quarry which, were it active and capable of wriggling and
biting, would expose the nurseling to terrible attacks. The danger has been
averted by the mother's stiletto; and the fragile grub attacks the
monster's paunch with as little hesitation as though it were sucking the
breast.

Day by day the young Scolia's head penetrates farther into the Cetonia's
belly. To pass through the narrow orifice made in the skin, the fore-part
of the body contracts and lengthens out, as though drawn through a die-
plate. The larva thus assumes a rather strange form. Its hinder half, which
is constantly outside the victim's belly, has the shape and fulness usual
in the larvae of the Digger-wasps, whereas the front half, which, once it