e cover, and
leave events to take their course. The laboratory in which I install my
bird is none other than my study. It is as cold in there, or nearly, as
outside, so much so that the water in the aquarium in which I used to
rear caddis worms has frozen into a solid block of ice. Under these
conditions of temperature, the owl's eyes keep their white veil of germs
unchanged. Nothing stirs, nothing swarms. Weary of waiting, I pay no
more attention to the carcass; I leave the future to decide whether the
cold has exterminated the fly's family or not.

Before the end of March, the packets of eggs have disappeared, I know
not how long. The bird, for that matter, seems to be intact. On the
ventral surface, which is turned to the air, the feathers keep their
smooth arrangement and their fresh coloring. I lift the thing. It is
light, very dry and gives a hard sound, like an old shoe tanned by the
summer sun in the fields. There is no smell. The dryness has vanquished
the stench, which, in any case, was never offensive during that time
of frost. On the other hand, the back, which touched the sand, is a
loathsome wreck, partly deprived of its feathers. The quills of the tail
are bare barreled; a few whitened bones show, deprived of their muscles.
The skin has turned into a dark leather, pierced with round holes like
those of a sieve. It is all hideously ugly, but most instructive.

The wretched owl, with his shattered backbone, teaches us, first of
all, that a temperature twelve degrees of frost does not endanger
the existence of the bluebottle's germs. The worms were born without
accident, despite the rude blast; they feasted copiously on extract
of meat; then, growing big and fat, they descended into the earth by
piercing round holes in the bird's skin. Their pupae must now be in the
sand of the pan.

They are, in point of fact, and in such numbers that I have to resort to
sifting in order to collect them. If I used the forceps, I should never
have done sorting so great a quantity. The sand passes through the
meshes of the sieve, the pupae remain above. To count them would wear
out my patience. I measure them by the bushel, that is to say, with a
thimble of which I know the holding capacity in pupae. The result of my
calculation is not far short of nine hundred.

Does this family proceed from one mother? I am quite ready to admit it,
so unlikely is it that the bluebottle, who is so rare inside our houses
during the severe