anipulate the morsel in concert,
stripping it of fur or feather, trussing it and allowing it to simmer
to the grub's taste. When everything is in order, the couple go forth,
dissolving their partnership; and each, following his fancy, begins
again elsewhere, even if only as a mere auxiliary.

Twice and no oftener hitherto have I found the father preoccupied by
the future of his sons and labouring in order to leave them rich: it
happens with certain dung-workers and with the Necrophori, who bury
dead bodies. Scavengers and undertakers both have exemplary morals.
Who would look for virtue in such a quarter?

What follows--the larval existence and the metamorphosis--is a
secondary and, for that matter, a familiar detail. It is a dry subject
and I will deal with it briefly. At the end of May, I exhume a Brown
Rat, buried by the grave-diggers a fortnight earlier. Transformed into
a black, sticky mass, the horrible dish provides me with fifteen
larvae already, for the most part, of the normal size. A few adults,
unquestionably connections of the brood, are also swarming amid the
putrescence. The laying-time is over now and victuals are plentiful.
Having nothing else to do, the foster-parents have sat down to the
feast with the nurslings.

The undertakers are quick at rearing a family. It is at most a
fortnight since the Rat was laid in the earth; and here already is a
vigorous population on the verge of the metamorphosis. This precocity
amazes me. It would seem as though carrion liquefaction, deadly to any
other stomach, were in this case a food productive of special energy,
which stimulates the organism and accelerates its growth, so that the
fare may be consumed before its approaching conversion into mould.
Living chemistry makes haste to outstrip the ultimate reactions of
mineral chemistry.

White, naked, blind, possessing the customary attributes of life spent
in the dark, the larva, with its tapering outline, is slightly
reminiscent of the Ground-beetles'. The mandibles are black and
powerful and make excellent dissecting-scissors. The limbs are short,
but capable of a quick, toddling gait. The segments of the abdomen are
clad on the upper surface in a narrow red plate, armed with four
little spikes, whose office apparently is to furnish points of support
when the larva quits the natal dwelling and dives into the soil, there
to undergo the transformation. The thoracic segments are provided with
wider plates, but una