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My preparation, in which the bluebottle's eggs are hatched, is neither shaken nor subjected to the heat of an oven; everything happens in quietness and under the thermometric conditions of the surrounding air; nevertheless, in a few days, the coagulated albumen, treated by the vermin, runs like water. The reagent that causes this liquefaction escapes my endeavors to detect it.
The wretched owl, with his shattered backbone, teaches us, first of all, that a temperature twelve degrees of frost does not endanger the existence of the bluebottle's germs. The worms were born without accident, despite the rude blast; they feasted copiously on extract of meat; then, growing big and fat, they descended into the earth by piercing round holes in the bird's skin.
The result of this first experiment is patent: the Bluebottle's grub is the medium that converts coagulated albumen into a liquid. The value of chemist's pepsin is estimated by the quantity of hard-boiled white of egg which a gram of that agent can liquefy. The mixture has to be exposed in an oven to a temperature of 1400 F. and also to be frequently shaken.
The worm, in this case, beats the pig and the sheep. The same method is followed for the remaining experiments. I put the bluebottle's eggs to hatch on a piece of meat and leave the worms to do their work as they please. The lean tissues, whether of mutton, beef or pork, no matter which, are not turned into liquid; they become a pea soup of a clarety brown.
How did it learn that, to safeguard the pupa, it must desert the carcass and that, to safeguard the fly, it must not bury itself too far down? To emerge from underground after the perfect insect is hatched, the bluebottle's device consists in disjointing her head into two movable halves, which, each distended with its great red eye, by turns separate and reunite.
The owl's eyes, glazed in death, were hidden under a thick mass of eggs, which I recognized as a bluebottle's. Similar masses occupied the vicinity of the nostrils. If I wanted maggots, here, of a certainty, was a richer crop than I had ever beheld. I place the corpse on the sand of a pan, with a wire gauze cover, and leave events to take their course.
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