ent ages. The
older are almost as thick as one's finger; the others hardly attain the
diameter of a pencil. I find, in addition, pupae more or less fully
coloured, perfect insects, with a distended abdomen, ready to leave the
trunk when the hot weather comes again. Life inside the wood,
therefore, lasts three years. How is this long period of solitude and
captivity spent? In wandering lazily through the thickness of the oak,
in making roads whose rubbish serves as food. The horse in Job swallows
the ground in a figure of speech; the Capricorn's grub literally eats
its way. ("Chafing and raging, he swalloweth the ground, neither doth
he make account when the noise of the trumpet soundeth."--Job 39, 23
(Douai version).--Translator's Note.) With its carpenter's gouge, a
strong black mandible, short, devoid of notches, scooped into a
sharp-edged spoon, it digs the opening of its tunnel. The piece cut out
is a mouthful which, as it enters the stomach, yields its scanty juices
and accumulates behind the worker in heaps of wormed wood. The refuse
leaves room in front by passing through the worker. A labour at once of
nutrition and of road-making, the path is devoured while constructed;
it is blocked behind as it makes way ahead. That, however, is how all
the borers who look to wood for victuals and lodging set about their
business.

For the harsh work of its two gouges, or curved chisels, the larva of
the Capricorn concentrates its muscular strength in the front of its
body, which swells into a pestle-head. The Buprestis-grubs, those other
industrious carpenters, adopt a similar form; they even exaggerate
their pestle. The part that toils and carves hard wood requires a
robust structure; the rest of the body, which has but to follow after,
continues slim. The essential thing is that the implement of the jaws
should possess a solid support and a powerful motor. The Cerambyx-larva
strengthens its chisels with a stout, black, horny armour that
surrounds the mouth; yet, apart from its skull and its equipment of
tools, the grub has a skin as fine as satin and white as ivory. This
dead white comes from a copious layer of grease which the animal's
spare diet would not lead us to suspect. True, it has nothing to do, at
every hour of the day and night, but gnaw. The quantity of wood that
passes into its stomach makes up for the dearth of nourishing elements.

The legs, consisting of three pieces, the first globular, the last
sharp-po