e to his lips; he wonders by what whimsy I
prefer wood that is worm-eaten, _chirouna_, as he calls it, to sound
wood, which burns so much better. I have my views on the subject; and
the worthy man submits to them.

And now to us two, O my fine oak-trunk seamed with scars, gashed with
wounds whence trickle the brown drops smelling of the tan-yard. The
mallet drives home, the wedges bite, the wood splits. What do your
flanks contain? Real treasures for my studies. In the dry and hollow
parts, groups of various insects, capable of living through the bad
season of the year, have taken up their winter quarters: in the
low-roofed galleries, galleries built by some Buprestis Beetle,
Osmiae, working their paste of masticated leaves, have piled their
cells one above the other; in the deserted chambers and vestibules,
Megachiles have arranged their leafy jars; in the live wood, filled
with juicy saps, the larvae of the Capricorn (_Cerambyx miles_), the
chief author of the oak's undoing, have set up their home.

Strange creatures, of a verity, are these grubs, for an insect of
superior organization: bits of intestines crawling about! At this time
of year, the middle of autumn, I meet them of two different ages. The
older are almost as thick as one's finger; the others hardly attain
the diameter of a pencil. I find, in addition, pupae more or less
fully coloured, perfect insects, with a distended abdomen, ready to
leave the trunk when the hot weather comes again. Life inside the
wood, therefore, lasts three years. How is this long period of
solitude and captivity spent? In wandering lazily through the
thickness of the oak, in making roads whose rubbish serves as food.
The horse in Job swallows the ground[2] in a figure of speech; the
Capricorn's grub eats its way literally. With its carpenter's-gouge, a
strong black mandible, short, devoid of notches, scooped into a
sharp-edged spoon, it digs the opening of its tunnel. The piece cut
out is a mouthful which, as it enters the stomach, yields its scanty
juices and accumulates behind the worker in heaps of wormed wood. The
refuse leaves room in front by passing through the worker. A labour at
once of nutrition and of road-making, the path is devoured while
constructed; it is blocked behind as it makes way ahead. That,
however, is how all the borers who look to wood for victuals and
lodging set about their business.

[Footnote 2: "Chafing and raging, he swalloweth the ground, neither