Who would venture to calculate the final chance on which the future of
the Scolia, or of her precursor, is based, that complex chance whose
factors are four infinitely improbable occurrences, one might almost
say four impossibilities? And such a conjunction is supposed to be a
fortuitous result, to which the present instinct is due! Come, come!

From another point of view again, the Darwinian theory is at variance
with the Scoliae and their prey. In the heap of garden mould which I
exploited in order to write this record, three kinds of larvae dwell
together, belonging to the Scarabaeid group: the Cetonia, the Oryctes
and Scarabeus pentodon. Their internal structure is very nearly similar;
their food is the same, consisting of decomposing vegetable matter;
their habits are identical: they live underground in tunnels which
are frequently renewed; they make a rough egg-shaped cocoon of earthy
materials. Environment, diet, industry and internal structure are all
similar; and yet one of these three larvae, the Cetonia's, reveals a
most singular dissimilarity from its fellow-trenchermen: alone among
the Scarabaeidae and, more than that, alone in all the immense order of
insects, it walks upon its back.

If the differences were a matter of a few petty structural details,
falling within the finical department of the classifier, we might pass
them over without hesitation; but a creature that turns itself upside
down in order to walk with its belly in the air and never adopts any
other method of locomotion, though it possesses legs and good legs at
that, assuredly deserves examination. How did the animal acquire its
fantastic mode of progress and why does it think fit to walk in a
fashion the exact contrary of that adopted by other beasts?

To these questions the science now in fashion always has a reply
ready: adaptation to environment. The Cetonia-larva lives in crumbling
galleries which it bores in the depths of the soil. Like the sweep who
obtains a purchase with his back, loins and knees to hoist himself up
the narrow passage of a chimney, it gathers itself up, applies the tip
of its belly to one wall of its gallery and its sturdy back to another;
and the combined effort of these two levers results in moving it
forward. The legs, which are used very little, indeed hardly at all,
waste away and tend to disappear, as does any organ which is left
unemployed; the back, on the other hand, the principal motive agent,
grows str