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Updated: May 31, 2025
Though unable to speak with certainty or precision, I am inclined to look upon these devourers of Scarabaeus-grubs as valiant agricultural auxiliaries. The Cetonia-larva has figured hitherto only in its quality of a paralysed victim. We will now consider it in its normal state.
How did the animal acquire its fantastic mode of progress and why does it think fit to walk in a fashion the exact contrary of that adopted by other beasts? To these questions the science now in fashion always has a reply ready: adaptation to environment. The Cetonia-larva lives in crumbling galleries which it bores in the depths of the soil.
The Cetonia-larva, as served up to the young Scolia by its mother, is profoundly paralysed. Its inertia is complete and so striking that it constitutes one of the leading features of this narrative. But we will not anticipate. For the moment, the thing is to substitute for this inert larva a similar larva, but one not paralysed, one very much alive.
The grub that gnaws the Cetonia-larva, that generous piece of butcher's meat; the glutton that crunches its batch of tough Locusts; the one that battens on nitrobenzine-flavoured game: they certainly own unfastidious gullets and accommodating stomachs.
That is its manner of travelling over a flat surface; it has no other. This reversal of the usual mode of walking is so peculiar to the Cetonia-larva that it is enough in itself to reveal the grub's identity to the least expert eyes.
It thrusts its neck into the belly of its prey; and for a couple of days all seems to go well. Then, lo and behold, the Cetonia turns putrid and the Scolia dies, poisoned by the ptomaines of the decomposing game! As before, I see it turn brown and die on the spot, still half inside the toxic corpse. The fatal issue of my experiment is easily explained. The Cetonia-larva is alive in every sense.
Dig into the vegetable mould formed by the decayed wood in the hollow trunks of old willow-trees, search at the foot of rotten stumps or in heaps of compost; and, if you come upon a plumpish grub moving along on its back, there is no room for doubt: your discovery is a Cetonia-larva.
I move the Scolia from its position, extract its head from the entrails of the Cetonia-larva and leave it to its own resources on its victim's belly. Betraying every symptom of uneasiness, the grub gropes, hesitates, casts about and does not insert its mandibles anywhere, though it is now the ventral surface which it is exploring.
If there be nothing to guide her, what chance has the mother of gluing her egg to this point, which is always the same because it is that most favourable to successful rearing? Is this all? Not yet. The grub is hatched; it pierces the belly of the Cetonia-larva at the requisite point; it plunges its long neck into the entrails, ransacking them and filling itself to repletion.
It is a highly-elaborated fluid, easy of digestion, and forms a sort of milk-diet for the new-born grub. The little ogre's teat is the bleeding paunch of the Cetonia-larva. The latter will not die of the wound, at least not for some time. The next thing to be tackled is the fatty substance which wraps the internal organs in its delicate folds.
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