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The Scolia grips a point of the Anoxia-grub's thorax; she curves her body underneath it and, while encircling the grub, gropes with the tip of her abdomen along the median line of the larva's neck.
Layers of mortar, sparingly applied, hold them together. The outside of the cell thus assumes the appearance of a piece of rustic architecture, in which the stones project with their natural irregularities; but the inside, which requires a more even surface in order not to hurt the larva's tender skin, is covered with a coat of pure mortar.
Thus, to the ordinary metamorphoses which make a Beetle pass successively through the stages of larva, nymph and perfect insect, the Meloidæ add others which repeatedly transform the larva's exterior, without introducing any modification of its viscera.
On this epidermal bag, this sort of transparent leather bottle, formed by the larva's skin detached all of a piece, without a slit of any kind, we can distinguish the several well-preserved external organs: the head, with its antennæ, mandibles, paws and palpi; the thoracic segments, with their vestiges of legs; the abdomen, with its chain of breathing-holes still connected one to another by tracheal threads.
I wave it away for a second, at the same time planting my straw as before, a straw sticking out nearly a centimetre. Will she, who is scrupulous in ridding the home of the least mote of dust, extract this beam, which would certainly prove the larva's undoing by interfering with its growth? She could, for just now we saw her drag out and throw away, at a distance, a similar beam.
The mother, with her unfailing instinct, has already made the dangerous choice; she has stuck her egg on the propitious spot and, by the very act of doing so, marked out the course for the inexperienced grub to follow. The tact of ripe age here guides the young larva's behavior at table. The conditions are very different in the Anthrax' case.
Therefore there is no sign of irritation on the larva's part under the needle with which I stir it and still less under the sucker of the Anthrax grub, which is able to drain the affluent breast in perfect safety.
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