ce the perils of the
surface. Eating is not everything: we have to get out of this. The
larva, so well-equipped with tools and muscular strength, finds no
difficulty in going where it pleases, by boring through the wood; but
does the coming Capricorn, whose short spell of life must be spent in
the open air, possess the same advantages? Hatched inside the trunk,
will the long-horned Beetle be able to clear itself a way of escape?

That is the difficulty which the worm solves by inspiration. Less
versed in things of the future, despite my gleams of reason, I resort
to experiment with a view to fathoming the question. I begin by
ascertaining that the Capricorn, when he wishes to leave the trunk, is
absolutely unable to make use of the tunnel wrought by the larva. It
is a very long and very irregular maze, blocked with great heaps of
wormed wood. Its diameter decreases progressively from the final blind
alley to the starting-point. The larva entered the timber as slim as a
tiny bit of straw; it is to-day as thick as one's finger. In its three
years' wanderings, it always dug its gallery according to the mould of
its body. Evidently, the road by which the larva entered and moved
about cannot be the Capricorn's exit-way: his immoderate antennae, his
long legs, his inflexible armour-plates would encounter an insuperable
obstacle in the narrow, winding corridor, which would have to be
cleared of its wormed wood and, moreover, greatly enlarged. It would
be less fatiguing to attack the untouched timber and dig straight
ahead. Is the insect capable of doing so? We shall see.

I make some chambers of suitable size in oak logs chopped in two; and
each of my artificial cells receives a newly-transformed Cerambyx,
such as my provisions of firewood supply, when split by the wedge, in
October. The two pieces are then joined and kept together with a few
bands of wire. June comes. I hear a scraping inside my billets. Will
the Capricorns come out, or not? The delivery does not seem difficult
to me: there is hardly three-quarters of an inch to pierce. Not one
emerges. When all is silence, I open my apparatus. The captives, from
first to last, are dead. A vestige of sawdust, less than a pinch of
snuff, represents all their work.

I expected more from those sturdy tools, their mandibles. But, as we
have seen before, the tool does not make the workman.[5] In spite of
their boring-implements, the hermits die in my cases for lack of
skill. I