the other, with curved ends that do not face, thus excluding the
possibility of any function such as seizing and grinding.

The two guttural grapnels serve for walking much rather than for
feeding. The worm plants them alternately in the road traversed and, by
contracting its crupper, advances just that distance. It carries in
its tubular throat the equivalent of our iron tipped sticks which give
support and assist progress.

Thanks to this machinery of the mouth, the maggot not only moves over
the surface, but also easily penetrates the meat: I see it disappear
as though it were dipping into butter. It cuts its way, levying, as it
goes, a preliminary toll, but only of liquid mouthfuls. Not the smallest
solid particle is detached and swallowed. That is not the maggot's
diet. It wants a broth, a soup, a sort of fluid extract of beef which it
prepares itself. As digestion, after all, merely means liquefaction,
we may say, without being guilty of paradox, that the grub of the
bluebottle digests its food before swallowing it.

With the object of relieving gastric troubles, our manufacturing
chemists scrape the stomachs of the pig and sheep and thus obtain
pepsin, a digestive agent which possesses the property of liquefying
albuminous matters and lean meat in particular. Why cannot they rasp
the stomach of the maggot! They would obtain a product of the highest
quality, for the carnivorous worm also owns its pepsin, pepsin of a
singularly active kind, as the following experiments will show us.

I divide the white of a hard-boiled egg into tiny cubes and place them
in a little test-tube. On the top of the contents, I sprinkle the eggs
of the bluebottle, eggs free from the least stain, taken from those
laid on the outside of tins baited with meat and not absolutely shut.
A similar test-tube is filled with white of egg, but receives no germs.
Both are closed with a plug of cotton-wool and left in a dark corner.

In a few days, the tube swarming with newborn vermin contains a liquid
as fluid and transparent as water. Not a drop would remain in the
tube if I turned it upside down. All the white of egg has disappeared,
liquefied. As for the worms, which are already a fair size, they seem
very ill at ease. Deprived of a support whence to attain the outer air,
most of them dive into the broth of their own making, where they perish
by drowning. Others, endowed with greater vigor, crawl up the glass to
the plug and manage to make t