cunning, in size, in implements, will
inoculate you with their deadly germs.

Not even the lily-dweller, with her dirty ways, is safe. Her grub is
as often the prey of another Tachina, larger than that of the Field
Crioceris. The parasite, I am convinced, does not sow her eggs upon
the victim so long as the latter is wrapped in its repulsive
great-coat; but a moment's imprudence gives her a favourable
opportunity.

When the time comes for the grub to bury itself in the ground, there
to undergo the transformation, it lays aside its mantle, with the
object perhaps of easing itself when it descends from the top of the
plant, or else with the object of taking a bath in that kindly
sunlight whereof it has hitherto tasted so little under its moist
coverlet. This naked journey over the leaves, the last joy of its
larval life, is fatal to the traveller. Up comes the Tachina, who,
finding a clean skin, all sleek with fat, loses no time in dabbing her
eggs upon it.

A census of the intact and of the injured larvae provides us with
particulars which agree with what we foresaw from the nature of their
respective lives. The most exposed to parasites is the Field
Crioceris, whose larva lives in the open air, without any sort of
protection. Next comes the Twelve-spotted Crioceris, who is
established in the asparagus-berry from her early infancy. The most
favoured is the Lily-beetle, who, while a grub, makes an ulster of her
excretions.

For the second time, we are here confronted by three insects which
look as if they had all come out of one mould, so much are they alike
in shape. If the costumes were not different and the sizes dissimilar,
we should not know how to tell one from another. And this pronounced
resemblance in figure is accompanied by a no less pronounced lack of
resemblance in instinct.

The evacuator that soils its back cannot have inspired the hermit
living in cleanly retirement inside its globe; the occupant of the
asparagus-berry did not advise the third to live in the open and
wander like an acrobat through the leafage. None of the three has
initiated the customs of the other two. All this seems to me as clear
as daylight. If they have issued from the same stock, how have they
acquired such dissimilar talents?

Furthermore, have these talents developed by degrees? The Lily-beetle
is prepared to tell us. Her grub, let us suppose, once conceived the
notion, when tormented by the Tachina, of making the stercor