xperiment. Split lengthwise, the grub's abode leaves a half-tunnel
wherein I can watch the occupant's doings. When left alone, it now
gnaws the front of its gallery, now rests, fixed by its ambulacra to
the two sides of the channel. I avail myself of these moments of quiet
to enquire into its power of perceiving sounds. The banging of hard
bodies, the ring of metallic objects, the grating of a file upon a saw
are tried in vain. The animal remains impassive. Not a wince, not a
move of the skin; no sign of awakened attention. I succeed no better
when I scratch the wood close by with a hard point, to imitate the
sound of some neighbouring larva gnawing the intervening thickness.
The indifference to my noisy tricks could be no greater in a lifeless
object. The animal is deaf.

Can it smell? Everything tells us no. Scent is of assistance in the
search for food. But the Capricorn-grub need not go in quest of
eatables: it feeds on its home, it lives on the wood that gives it
shelter. Let us make an attempt or two, however. I scoop in a log of
fresh cypress-wood a groove of the same diameter as that of the
natural galleries and I place the worm inside it. Cypress-wood is
strongly-scented; it possesses in a high degree that resinous aroma
which characterizes most of the pine family. Well, when laid in the
odoriferous channel, the larva goes to the end, as far as it can go,
and makes no further movement. Does not this placid quiescence point
to the absence of a sense of smell? The resinous flavour, so strange
to the grub which has always lived in oak, ought to vex it, to trouble
it; and the disagreeable impression ought to be revealed by a certain
commotion, by certain attempts to get away. Well, nothing of the kind
happens: once the larva has found the right position in the groove, it
does not stir. I do more: I set before it, at a very short distance,
in its normal canal, a piece of camphor. Again, no effect. Camphor is
followed by naphthaline. Still nothing. After these fruitless
endeavours, I do not think that I am going too far when I deny the
creature a sense of smell.

Taste is there, no doubt. But such taste! The food is without variety:
oak, for three years at a stretch, and nothing else. What can the
grub's palate appreciate in this monotonous fare? The tannic relish of
a fresh piece, oozing with sap; the uninteresting flavour of an
over-dry piece, robbed of its natural condiment: these probably
represent the whole gu