The Bluebottle: The Laying 



What determined her, therefore, Is not sim- 

 ply the smell, which can easily be perceived 

 even through the uncut paper, but, above all, 

 the crevice, which will provide an entrance for 

 the vermin, hatched outside, near the narrow 

 passage. The maggots' mother has her own 

 logic, her prudent foresight. She knows how 

 feeble her wee grubs will be, how powerless to 

 cut their way through an obstacle of any resist- 

 ance; and so, despite the temptation of the 

 smell, she refrains from laying so long as she 

 finds no entrance through which the new-born 

 worms can slip unaided. 



I wanted to know whether the colour, the 

 shininess, the degree of hardness and other 

 quahties of the obstacle would influence the 

 decision of a mother obliged to lay her eggs 

 under exceptional conditions. With this ob- 

 ject in view, I employed small jars, each baited 

 with a bit of butcher's meat. The respective 

 lids were made of different-coloured paper, of 

 oil-skin, or of some of that tin-foil, with its 

 gold or coppery sheen, which is used for seal- 

 ing liqueur-bottles. On not one of these cov- 

 ers did the mothers stop, with any desire to 

 deposit their eggs; but, from the moment that 

 the knife had made the narrow slit, all the lids 

 were, sooner or later, visited and all of them, 

 329 



