arrive.

After the cares of the future come the cares of the present. The larva,
which has just opened the aperture of escape, retreats some distance
down its gallery and, in the side of the exit-way, digs itself a
transformation-chamber more sumptuously furnished and barricaded than
any that I have ever seen. It is a roomy niche, shaped like a flattened
ellipsoid, the length of which reaches eighty to a hundred millimetres.
(3 to 4 inches.--Translator's Note.) The two axes of the cross-section
vary: the horizontal measures twenty-five to thirty millimetres (.975
to 1.17 inch.--Translator's Note.); the vertical measures only fifteen.
(.585 inch.--Translator's Note.) This greater dimension of the cell,
where the thickness of the perfect insect is concerned, leaves a
certain scope for the action of its legs when the time comes for
forcing the barricade, which is more than a close-fitting mummy-case
would do.

The barricade in question, a door which the larva builds to exclude the
dangers from without, is two-and even three-fold. Outside, it is a
stack of woody refuse, of particles of chopped timber; inside, a
mineral hatch, a concave cover, all in one piece, of a chalky white.
Pretty often, but not always, there is added to these two layers an
inner casing of shavings. Behind this compound door, the larva makes
its arrangements for the metamorphosis. The sides of the chamber are
rasped, thus providing a sort of down formed of ravelled woody fibres,
broken into minute shreds. The velvety matter, as and when obtained, is
applied to the wall in a continuous felt at least a millimetre thick.
(.039 inch.--Translator's Note.) The chamber is thus padded throughout
with a fine swan's-down, a delicate precaution taken by the rough worm
on behalf of the tender pupa.

Let us hark back to the most curious part of the furnishing, the
mineral hatch or inner door of the entrance. It is an elliptical
skull-cap, white and hard as chalk, smooth within and knotted without,
resembling more or less closely an acorn-cup. The knots show that the
matter is supplied in small, pasty mouthfuls, solidifying outside in
slight projections which the insect does not remove, being unable to
get at them, and polished on the inside surface, which is within the
worm's reach. What can be the nature of that singular lid whereof the
Cerambyx furnishes me with the first specimen? It is as hard and
brittle as a flake of lime-stone. It can be dissolved cold in