The Life of the Fly 



of a sucker or cupping-glass. Its attack is a 

 mere kiss, but what a perfidious kiss ! 



We know the machine; now let us see the 

 working. To facilitate observation, I shifted 

 the new-born Anthrax-grub, together with the 

 Chalicodoma-grub, its wet-nurse, from the 

 natal cell into a glass tube. I was thus able, 

 by employing as many tubes as I wanted, to 

 follow from start to finish, in all its most inti- 

 mate details, the strange repast which I am 

 going to describe. 



The worm is fixed by its sucker to any con- 

 venient part of the nurse, plump and fat as 

 butter. It is ready to break off its kiss sud- 

 denly, should anything disquiet it, and to re- 

 sume it as easily when tranquillity is restored. 

 No Lamb enjoys greater liberty with its 

 mother's teat. After three or four days of 

 this contact of the nurse and nurseling, the 

 former, at first replete and endowed with the 

 glossy skin that is a sign of health, begins 

 to assume a withered aspect. Her sides fall 

 in, her fresh colour fades, her skin becomes 

 covered with little folds and gives evidence of 

 an appreciable shrinking in this breast which, 

 instead of milk, yields fat and blood. A 

 week is hardly past before the progress of the 

 exhaustion becomes startlingly rapid. The 

 38 



