MAGGOTS FROM EGGS 31 



where they devoured the floating fragments of flesh; 

 and after two days, having consumed all that was left 

 of the frogs, they swam and sported about in the fetid 

 liquid, now creeping up, all soft and slimy, on the side 

 of the glass, now wriggling back to the water until at 

 last on the following day, without my knowledge, they 

 all disappeared, having reached the top of the dish. 



At the same time I enclosed some fish, called Barbi, 

 in a box full of holes, with a lid perforated in the same 

 way. When I opened it after four hours, I found a 

 large number of very minute maggots on the fish, and I 

 saw a great many tiny eggs adhering in bunches to the 

 joints and around all the holes in the interior of the box: 

 some of these were white and others, yellow. I crushed 

 them between my nails and the cracked shell emitted a 

 kind of whitish liquid, thinner and less viscuous than the 

 white of a fowl's egg. 



Having rearranged the box as it was before, and hav- 

 ing opened it, on the following day, I observed that all 

 the eggs had hatched into the same number of maggots, 

 and that the empty shells were still attached in the places 

 where the hatching occurred; I also noted that the first 

 maggots hatched had increased to double their size; but 

 what surprised me most was that on the following day 

 they had grown so large that every one of them weighed 

 about seven grains, while only the day before there would 

 have been twenty-four or thirty to a grain. All the 

 later ones hatched were very small. The whole lot, al- 

 most in the twinkling of an eye, finished devouring the 

 flesh of the fish, leaving all the bones so clean and white 

 that they looked like skeletons polished by the hand of 

 the most skilful anatomist. 



All these maggots, having been placed where they 



