the experiments which I have undertaken go to prove--would discourage our
nibbling larva and impede the work of carving, which has to be effected
with so much circumspection. It is not enough for the victim to be unable
to move from place to place beneath the soil: in addition to this, the
contractible power in its sturdy muscular organism must be suppressed.

In its normal state, this larva, at the very least disturbance, curls
itself up, almost as the Hedgehog does; and the two halves of the ventral
surface are laid one against the other. You are quite surprised at the
strength which the creature displays in keeping itself thus contracted. If
you try to unroll it, your fingers encounter a resistance far greater than
the size of the animal would have caused you to suspect. To overcome the
resistance of this sort of spring coiled upon itself, you have to force it,
so much so that you are afraid, if you persist, of seeing the indomitable
spiral suddenly burst and shoot forth its entrails.

A similar muscular energy is found in the larvae of the Oryctes (Also known
as the Rhinoceros Beetle.--Translator's Note.), the Anoxia (A Beetle akin
to the Cockchafer.--Translator's Note.), the Cockchafer. Weighed down by a
heavy belly and living underground, where they feed either on leaf-mould or
on roots, these larvae all possess the vigorous constitution needed to drag
their corpulence through a resisting medium. All of them also roll
themselves into a hook which is not straightened without an effort.

Now what would become of the egg and the new-born grub of the Scoliae,
fixed under the belly, at the centre of the Cetonia's spiral, or inside the
hook of the Oryctes or the Anoxia? They would be crushed between the jaws
of the living vice. It is essential that the arc should slacken and the
hook unbend, without the least possibility of their returning to a state of
tension. Indeed, the well-being of the Scoliae demands something more: