The Life of the Grasshopper 



to strip a leg partially with the point of a 

 knife and to extract the spines from their 

 horny mould. They are germs of spikes, 

 flexible buds which bend under the slightest 

 pressure and resume their upright position 

 as soon as the pressure is removed. 



These spikes lie backwards when the leg 

 is about to be drawn out; they stand up 

 again and solidify while it emerges. I am 

 witnessing not the mere stripping of gaiters 

 from limbs completely enclosed, but rather 

 a sort of birth and growth which disconcert 

 us by their rapidity. 



Much in the same way, but with far less 

 delicate precision, do the claws of the Cray- 

 fish, at moulting-time, withdraw the soft 

 flesh of their two fingers from the old stony 

 sheath. 



The shanks are free at last. They are 

 folded limply in the groove of the thigh, 

 there to mature without moving. The ab- 

 domen is next stripped. Its fine tunic wrin- 

 kles, rumples and pushes back towards the 

 extremity, which alone fcr some time longer 

 remains clad in the moulting skin. Except 

 at this point, the whole of the Locust is now 

 bare. 



It is hanging perpendicularly, head down, 



410 



