en as I myself do
when I give it a wound. For the lack of an attacking point prescribed
for him at birth, he will perish on the damaged provisions. His freedom
of action will have killed him.

Certainly, liberty is a noble attribute, even in an insignificant grub;
but it also has its dangers everywhere. The Anthrax escapes the peril
only on the condition of being, so to speak, muzzled. His mouth is not a
fierce forceps that tears asunder; it is a sucker that exhausts but does
not wound. Thus restrained by this safety appliance, which changes the
bite into a kiss, the grub has fresh victuals until it has finished
growing, although it knows nothing of the rules of methodical
consumption at a fixed point and in a predetermined direction.

The considerations which I have set forth seem to me strictly logical:
the Anthrax, owing to the very fact that he is free to take his
nourishment where he pleases on the body of the fostering larva, must,
for his own protection, be made incapable of opening his victim's body.
I am so utterly convinced of this harmonious relation between the eater
and the eaten that I do not hesitate to set it up as a principle. I
will therefore say this: whenever the egg of any kind of insect is not
fastened to the larva destined for its food, the young grub, free to
select the attacking point and to change it at will, is as it were
muzzled and consumes its provisions by a sort of suction, without
inflicting any appreciable wound. This restriction is essential to the
maintenance of the victuals in good condition. My principle is already
supported by examples many and various, whose depositions are all to the
same effect. The witnesses include, after the Anthrax, the Leucospis
[a parasitic insect] and his rivals, whose evidence we shall hear
presently; the Ephialtes mediator [an Ichneumon fly], who feeds, in
the dry brambles, on the larva of the Black Psen [a digger wasp]; the
Myodites, that strange, fly-shaped beetle whose grub consumes the larva
of the cockchafer. All--flies, ichneumon flies and beetles--scrupulously
spare their foster mother; they are careful not to tear her skin, so
that the vessel may keep its liquid good to the last.

The wholesomeness of the victuals is not the only condition imposed:
I find a second, which is no less essential. The substance of the
fostering larva must be sufficiently fluid to ooze through the unbroken
skin under the action of the sucker. Well, the necessary flu