ereas the Glow-worm, that expert liquefier, leaves nothing, or
next to nothing. With similar tools, the one simply sucks the blood of
its prey and the other turns every morsel of his to account, thanks to
a preliminary liquefaction.

And this is done with exquisite precision, though the equilibrium is
sometimes anything but steady. My rearing-glasses supply me with
magnificent examples. Crawling up the sides, the Snails imprisoned in
my apparatus sometimes reach the top, which is closed with a glass
pane, and fix themselves to it by means of a speck of glair. This is a
mere temporary halt, in which the mollusc is miserly with its adhesive
product, and the merest shake is enough to loosen the shell and send
it to the bottom of the jar.

Now it is not unusual for the Glow-worm to hoist himself to the top,
with the help of a certain climbing-organ that makes up for his weak
legs. He selects his quarry, makes a minute inspection of it to find
an entrance-slit, nibbles it a little, renders it insensible and,
without delay, proceeds to prepare the gruel which he will consume for
days on end.

When he leaves the table, the shell is found to be absolutely empty;
and yet this shell, which was fixed to the glass by a very faint
stickiness, has not come loose, has not even shifted its position in
the smallest degree: without any protest from the hermit gradually
converted into broth, it has been drained on the very spot at which
the first attack was delivered. These small details tell us how
promptly the anaesthetic bite takes effect; they teach us how
dexterously the Glow-worm treats his Snail without causing him to fall
from a very slippery vertical support and without even shaking him on
his slight line of adhesion.

Under these conditions of equilibrium, the operator's short, clumsy
legs are obviously not enough; a special accessory apparatus is needed
to defy the danger of slipping and to seize the unseizable. And this
apparatus the Lampyris possesses. At the hinder end of the animal we
see a white spot which the lens separates into some dozen short,
fleshy appendages, sometimes gathered into a cluster, sometimes spread
into a rosette. There is your organ of adhesion and locomotion. If he
would fix himself somewhere, even on a very smooth surface, such as a
grass-stalk, the Glow-worm opens his rosette and spreads it wide on
the support, to which it adheres by its own stickiness. The same
organ, rising and falling, openin