in which the customary brown is replaced by an
unmistakable green, the sign of a vegetable pulp. In course of time,
these green eggs turn brown and become like the others, no doubt by
reason of an oxidization which alters the natural qualities of the
digestive product still further. The egg, entering the cloaca in a
soft and utterly naked state, receives an artistic coat of the
intestinal dross, even as the Hen's egg is covered by a shell formed
of the chalky secretions.

_Materiem superabat opus, nam Mulciber illic
AEquora celerat_,

said Ovid, in his description of the Palace of the Sun. The poet had
precious metals and gems wherewith to build his imaginary marvel. What
has the Clythra wherewith to achieve its ideal jewel? It has the
shameful material whose name is banished from decent speech. And which
is the Mulciber, the Vulcan, the artist-engraver that engraves the
covering of the egg so prettily? It is the terminal sewer. The cloaca
rolls the material, flutes it, twists it into spirals, decks it with
chains of little pits and makes it up into a scaly suit of armour,
showing how nature laughs at our paltry standards of value and how
well able she is to convert the sordid into the beautiful.

In the bird, the egg-shell is a temporary defensive cell which at
hatching-time is broken and abandoned and is henceforth useless. Made
of horny matter or stercoral paste, the shell of the Clythra and the
Cryptocephalus is, on the contrary, a permanent refuge, which the
insect will never leave so long as it remains a larva. Here the grub
is born with a ready-made garment, of rare elegance and an exact fit,
a garment which it only has to enlarge, little by little, in the
original manner described above. The shell, shaped like a little
barrel or thimble, is open in front. There is nothing therefore to
break, nothing to cast aside at the moment of hatching, except perhaps
the actual envelope of the egg. Directly this membrane is burst, the
tiny creature is free, with a handsome carved jacket, a legacy from
its mother.

Let us indulge in a crazy dream and imagine young birds which keep the
egg-shell intact, save for an opening through which they pass their
head, and which, all their lives long, remain clad in this shell, on
condition that they themselves enlarge it as they grow. This absurd
dream is realized by our grub: it is dressed in the shell of its egg,
expanded by degrees as the grub itself grows bigger.

In July all