rey or withdraws it with an ease that can only be
explained by a process of simple contact. This being so, the Anthrax
does not chew its food as do the other carnivorous grubs; it does not
eat, it inhales.

This method of taking nourishment implies an exceptional apparatus of
the mouth, into which it behooves us to inquire before continuing. My
most powerful magnifying glass at last discovers, at the center of the
pimple head, a small spot of an amber-russet color; and that is all. For
a more exhaustive examination we will employ the microscope. I cut off
the strange pimple with the scissors, wash it in a drop of water and
place it on the object slide. The mouth now stands revealed as a round
spot which, for hue and for the smallness of its size, may be compared
with the front stigmata. It is a small conical crater, with sides of a
pale yellowish-red and with faint, more or less concentric lines. At the
bottom of this funnel is the opening of the gullet, itself tinted red in
front and promptly spreading into a cone at the back. There is not the
slightest trace of mandibular fangs, of jaws, of mouth parts for seizing
and grinding. Everything is reduced to the bowl shaped opening, with a
delicate lining of horny texture, as is shown by the amber hue and
the concentric streaks. When I look for some term to designate this
digestive entrance, of which so far I know no other example, I can find
only that of a sucker or cupping glass. Its attack is a mere kiss, but
what a perfidious kiss!

We know the machine; now let us see the working. To facilitate
observation, I shifted the newborn Anthrax grub, together with the
Chalicodoma grub, its wet nurse, from the natal cell into a glass tube.
I was thus able, by employing as many tubes as I wanted, to follow from
start to finish, in all its most intimate details, the strange repast
which I am going to describe.

The worm is fixed by its sucker to any convenient part of the nurse,
plump and fat as butter. It is ready to break off its kiss suddenly,
should anything disquiet it, and to resume it as easily when
tranquillity is restored. No Lamb enjoys greater liberty with its
mother's teat. After three or four days of this contact of the nurse and
nursling, the former, at first replete and endowed with the glossy skin
that is a sign of health, begins to assume a withered aspect. Her sides
fall in, her fresh color fades, her skin becomes covered with little
folds and gives evidence o