he metamorphosis are at hand, the stomachic
pouch, having no longer to do duty as a digestive laboratory, serves
the insect as a factory, or a warehouse for different purposes. Here
the Sitares store up their uric waste products; here the Capricorns
collect the chalky paste which becomes the stone lid for the entrance
to the cell; here caterpillars keep in reserve the gums and powders
with which they strengthen the cocoon; hence the Hymenoptera draw the
lacquer which they employ to upholster their silken edifice. And now
we find the Lily-beetle using it as a store for frothy cement.[1] What
an obliging organ is this digestive pouch!

[Footnote 1: This subject is continued in the essay on the Foamy
Cicadella. Cf. _The Life of the Grasshopper_: chap. xx.--_Translator's
Note_.]

The two Asparagus-beetles are likewise proficient dribblers, worthy
rivals of their kinswoman of the lily in the matter of building. In
all three cases the underground shell has the same shape and the same
structure.

When, after a subterranean visit of two months' duration, the
Lily-beetle returns to the surface in her adult form, a botanical
problem remains to be solved before the history of the insect is
completed. We are now at the height of summer. The lilies have had
their day. A dry, leafless stick, surmounted by a few tattered
capsules, is all that is left of the magnificent plant of the spring.
Only the onion-like bulb remains a little way down. There, postponing
the process of vegetation, it waits for the steady rains of the
autumn, which will renew its strength and make it burgeon into a sheaf
of leaves.

How does the Lily-beetle live during the summer, before the return of
the green foliage dear to its race? Does it fast during the extreme
heat? If abstinence is its rule of life in this season of vegetable
dearth, why does it emerge from underground, why does it abandon its
shell, where it could sleep so peacefully, without the necessity of
eating? Can it be need of food that drives it from the substratum and
sends it to the sunlight so soon as the wing-cases have assumed their
vermilion hue? It is very likely. For the rest, let us look into the
matter.

On the ruined stems of my white lilies I find a portion covered with a
scrap of green skin. I set it before the prisoners in my jars, who
emerged from their sandy bed a day or two ago. They attack it with an
appetite which is extremely conclusive; the green morsel is stripped
ba