The Life of the Fly 



the purpose of a door. Next day, I found the 

 piece gnawed, but only on the under side. 



The Bolboceras does not like eating in pub- 

 lic, in the open air; he needs the discreet re- 

 tirement of his crypt. When he fails to find 

 his food by burrowing under ground, he comes 

 up to look for it on the surface. Meeting with 

 a morsel to his taste, he takes it home w^hen its 

 size permits; if not, he leaves it on the thresh- 

 old of his burrow and gnaws at it from be- 

 low, without reappearing outside. Up to the 

 present, hydnocistes, truffles and rhizopoga are 

 the only food that I have known him to eat. 

 These three instances tell us at any rate that 

 the Bolboceras is not a specialist like the Oxy- 

 porus and the Triplax; he is able to vary his 

 diet; perhaps he feeds on all the underground 

 mushrooms indiscriminately. 



The Moth enlarges her domain yet further. 

 Her Caterpillar is a grub five or six millimetres 

 long,^ white, with a black shiny head. Col- 

 onies of it abound in most mushrooms. It at- 

 tacks by preference the top of the stem, for epi- 

 curean reasons that escape me; thence it 

 spreads throughout the cap. It is the habitual 

 boarder of the boleti, agarics, lactarii and rus- 

 sulce. Apart from certain species and certain 



'About one-fifth of an inch. — Translator's Note. 

 406 



