intestine
that crawls about. The undeniable accuracy of this definition provides
me with my answer: the grub has the aggregate of sense-impressions that
a bit of an intestine may hope to have.

And this nothing-at-all is capable of marvellous acts of foresight;
this belly, which knows hardly aught of the present, sees very clearly
into the future. Let us take an illustration on this curious subject.
For three years on end the larva wanders about in the thick of the
trunk; it goes up, goes down, turns to this side and that; it leaves
one vein for another of better flavour, but without moving too far from
the inner depths, where the temperature is milder and greater safety
reigns. A day is at hand, a dangerous day for the recluse obliged to
quit its excellent retreat and face the perils of the surface. Eating
is not everything: we have to get out of this. The larva, so
well-equipped with tools and muscular strength, finds no difficulty in
going where it pleases, by boring through the wood; but does the coming
Capricorn, whose short spell of life must be spent in the open air,
possess the same advantages? Hatched inside the trunk, will the
long-horned insect be able to clear itself a way of escape?

That is the difficulty which the worm solves by inspiration. Less
versed in things of the future, despite my gleams of reason, I resort
to experiment with a view to fathoming the question. I begin by
ascertaining that the Capricorn, when he wishes to leave the trunk, is
absolutely unable to make use of the tunnel wrought by the larva. It is
a very long and very irregular maze, blocked with great heaps of wormed
wood. Its diameter decreases progressively from the final blind alley
to the starting-point. The larva entered the timber as slim as a tiny
bit of straw; it is to-day as thick as my finger. In its three years'
wanderings it always dug its gallery according to the mould of its
body. Evidently, the road by which the larva entered and moved about
cannot be the Capricorn's exit-way: his immoderate antennae, his long
legs, his inflexible armour-plates would encounter an insuperable
obstacle in the narrow, winding corridor, which would have to be
cleared of its wormed wood and, moreover, greatly enlarged. It would be
less fatiguing to attack the untouched timber and dig straight ahead.
Is the insect capable of doing so? We shall see.

I make some chambers of suitable size in oak logs chopped in two; and
each of my artifici