armed with two little black hooks, which slide
in a translucent sheath, project a little way outside and go in turn by
turn. Are we to look upon these as mandibles? Not at all, for, instead
of having their points facing each other, as would be required in a
real mandibular apparatus, the two hooks work in parallel directions
and never meet. What they are is ambulatory organs, grapnels assisting
locomotion, which give a purchase on the plane and enable the animal to
advance by means of repeated contractions. The maggot walks with the aid
of what a superficial examination would pronounce to be a machine
for eating. It carries in its gullet the equivalent of the climber's
alpenstock.

Let us hold it, on a piece of flesh, under the lens. We shall see it
walking about, raising and lowering its head and, each time, stabbing
the meat with its pair of hooks. When stationary, with its crupper at
rest, it explores space with a continual bending of its fore part; its
pointed head pokes about, jabs forward, goes back again, producing and
withdrawing its black mechanism. There is a perpetual piston play. Well,
look as carefully and conscientiously as I please, I do not once see the
weapons of the mouth tackle a particle of flesh that is torn away and
swallowed. The hooks come down upon the meat at every moment, but never
take a visible mouthful from it. Nevertheless, the grub waxes big and
fat. How does this singular consumer, who feeds without eating, set
about it? If he does not eat, he must drink; his diet is soup. As meat
is a compact substance, which does not liquefy of its own accord, there
must, in that case, be a certain recipe to dissolve it into a fluid
broth. Let us try to surprise the maggot's secret.

In a glass tube, sealed at one end, I insert a piece of lean flesh, the
size of a walnut, which I have drained of its juices by squeezing it in
blotting paper. On the top of this, I place a few slabs of greenbottle
eggs collected a moment ago from the snake in my earthen pan. The number
of germs is, roughly, two hundred. I close the tube with a cotton plug,
stand it upright, in a shady corner of my study, and leave things to
take their course. A control tube, prepared like the first, but not
stocked with maggots, is placed beside it.

As early as two or three days after the hatching, I obtain a striking
result. The meat, which was thoroughly drained by the blotting paper,
has become so moist that the young vermin leave