I fix it to a little slab of cork, with its belly in the air. Next, to
provide the grub with a ready-made hole, knowing that it will refuse to
make one for itself, I contrive a slight incision in the skin, at the point
where the Scolia lays her egg. I now place the grub upon the larva, with
its head touching the bleeding wound, and lay the whole on a bed of mould
in a transparent beaker protected by a pane of glass.

Unable to move, to wriggle, to scratch with its legs or snap with its
mandibles, the Cetonia-larva, a new Prometheus bound, offers its
defenceless flanks to the little Vulture destined to devour its entrails.
Without too much hesitation, the young Scolia settles down to the wound
made by my scalpel, which to the grub represents the wound whence I have
just removed it. It thrusts its neck into the belly of its prey; and for a
couple of days all seems to go well. Then, lo and behold, the Cetonia turns
putrid and the Scolia dies, poisoned by the ptomaines of the decomposing
game! As before, I see it turn brown and die on the spot, still half inside
the toxic corpse.

The fatal issue of my experiment is easily explained. The Cetonia-larva is
alive in every sense. True, I have, by means of bonds, suppressed its
outward movements, in order to provide the nurseling with a quiet meal,
devoid of danger; but it was not in my power to subdue its internal
movements, the quivering of the viscera and muscles irritated by its forced
immobility and by the Scolia's bites. The victim is in possession of its
full power of sensation; and it expresses the pain experienced as best it
may, by contractions. Embarrassed by these tremors, these twitches of
suffering flesh, incommoded at every mouthful, the grub chews away at
random and kills the larva almost as soon as it has started on it. In a
victim paralysed by the regulation sting, the conditions would be very
different. There are no external movements, nor any internal movements