in by liquefying their food. Incapable of taking solid nourishment,
they first transform the spoil into running matter; then, dipping their
heads into the product, they drink, they slake their thirst, with long
sups. Their dissolvent, comparable in its effects with the gastric juice
of the higher animals, is, beyond a doubt, emitted through the mouth.
The piston of the hooks, continually in movement, never ceases spitting
it out in infinitesimal doses. Each spot touched receives a grain of
some subtle pepsin, which soon suffices to make that spot run in every
direction. As digesting, when all is said, merely means liquefying,
it is no paradox to assert that the maggot digests its food before
swallowing it.

These experiments with my filthy, evil smelling tubes have given me some
delightful moments. The worthy Abbe Spallanzani must have known some
such when he saw pieces of raw meat begin to run under the action of the
gastric juice which he took, with pellets of sponge, from the stomachs
of crows. He discovered the secrets of digestion; he realized in a glass
tube the hitherto unknown labors of gastric chemistry. I, his distant
disciple, behold once more, under a most unexpected aspect, what struck
the Italian scientist so forcibly. Worms take the place of the crows.
They slaver upon meat, gluten, albumen; and those substances turn to
fluid. What our stomach does within its mysterious recesses the maggot
achieves outside, in the open air. It first digests and then imbibes.

When we see it plunging into the carrion broth, we even wonder if it
cannot feed itself, at least to some extent, in a more direct fashion.
Why should not its skin, which is one of the most delicate, be capable
of absorbing? I have seen the egg of the sacred beetle and other dung
beetles growing considerably larger--I should like to say, feeding--in
the thick atmosphere of the hatching chamber. Nothing tells us that the
grub of the greenbottle does not adopt this method of growing. I picture
it capable of feeding all over the surface of its body. To the gruel
absorbed by the mouth it adds the balance of what is gathered and
strained through the skin. This would explain the need for provisions
liquefied beforehand.

Let us give one last proof of this preliminary liquefaction. If the
carcass--mole, snake or another--left in the open air have a wire gauze
cover placed over it, to keep out the flies, the game dries under a hot
sun and shrivels up witho