inroads of putrefaction until the mandibles have given their last bites.
Does not this remnant of tenacious vitality in itself show that the organs
of primary importance are the last to be attacked? Does it not prove that
there is a progressive dismemberment passing from the less essential to the
indispensable?

Would you like to see what becomes of a Cetonia-larva when the organism is
wounded in its vital centres at the very beginning? The experiment is an
easy one; and I made a point of trying it. A sewing-needle, first softened
and flattened into a blade, then retempered and sharpened, gives me a most
delicate scalpel. With this instrument I make a fine incision, through
which I remove the mass of nerves whose remarkable structure we shall soon
have occasion to study. The thing is done: the wound, which does not look
serious, has left the creature a corpse, a real corpse. I lay my victim on
a bed of moist earth, in a jar with a glass lid; in fact, I establish it in
the same conditions as those of the larvae on which the Scoliae feed. By
the next day, without changing shape, it has turned a repulsive brown;
presently it dissolves into noisome putrescence. On the same bed of earth,
under the same glass cover, in the same moist, warm atmosphere, the larvae
three-quarters eaten by the Scoliae retain, on the contrary, the appearance
of healthy flesh.

If a single stroke of my dagger, fashioned from the point of a needle,
results in immediate death and early putrefaction; if the repeated bites of
the Scolia gut the creature's body and reduce it almost to a skin without
completely killing it, the striking contrast between these two results must
be due to the relative importance of the organs injured. I destroy the
nerve-centres and inevitably kill my larva, which is putrid by the
following day; the Scolia attacks the reserves of fat, the blood, the
muscles and does not kill its victim, which will provide it with wholesome