ut sticking to the wall at
any part. The small amount of free play allowed to this kernel
accounts for the rattling which I heard when I shook the thing.

In the colour and general appearance of the whole, the kernel does not
differ from the wrapper. But break it open and minutely examine the
pieces. We now recognize tiny fragments of bone, flocks of down,
threads of wool, scraps of flesh, the whole mixed in an earthy paste
resembling chocolate.

This paste, when placed on hot charcoal, sifted under the lens and
deprived of its particles of dead bodies, becomes much darker, is
covered with shiny bubbles and sends forth puffs of that acrid smoke
by which we so readily recognize burnt animal matter. The whole mass
of the kernel, therefore, is strongly impregnated with sanies.

Treated in the same manner, the wrapper also turns black, but not to
the same extent; it hardly smokes; it does not become covered with
jet-black bubbles; lastly, it would not anywhere contain bits of
carcase similar to those in the central kernel. In both cases, the
residue after calcination is a fine, reddish clay.

This brief analysis tells us all about the table of _Phanaeus Milon_.
The fare served to the grub is a sort of meat-pie. The sausage-meat
consists of a mince of all that the two scalpels of the forehead and
the toothed knives of the fore-legs have been able to remove from the
corpse: hair and down, small crushed bones, strips of flesh and skin.
Now hard as brick, the thickening of this mincemeat was originally a
paste of fine clay steeped in the liquor of corruption. Lastly, the
light crust of our meat-pies is here represented by a covering of the
same clay, less rich in extract of meat than the other.

The pastry-cook gives his work an elegant shape; he decorates it with
rosettes, with twists, with scrolls. _Phanaeus Milon_ is no stranger
to these culinary aesthetics. She turns the crust of her meat-pie into
a splendid gourd, with a finger-print ornamentation.

The outer covering, an unprofitable crust, insufficiently steeped in
savoury juices, is not, we can easily guess, intended for consumption.
It is possible that, somewhat later, when the stomach becomes robust
and is not repelled by coarse fare, the grub scrapes a little from the
sides of its pasty walls; but, until the adult insect emerges, the
calabash as a whole remains intact, having acted at first as a
safeguard of the freshness of the force-meat and all the while as