The Sacred Beetle: the Pear 



The provisions, therefore, even though 

 they have to last but three or four weeks, 

 are liable to dry up before that time and 

 to become uneatable. When, instead of the 

 soft bread of its first meal, the unhappy grub 

 finds nothing to stay its stomach but a 

 horrible crust, hard as a pebble and tooth- 

 proof, it is bound to perish of hunger. And 

 it does actually so perish. I have found 

 numbers of these victims of the August sun 

 which, after eating plentifully of the fresh 

 food and digging themselves a cell in it, had 

 succumbed, unable to continue biting into 

 provisions that had become too hard. 

 There remained a thick shell, a sort of closed 

 oven, in which the poor thing lay baked and 

 shrivelled up. 



While the grub dies of hunger in a shell 

 which has dried into stone, the full-grown 

 insect that has completed its transformations 

 dies there too, for it is incapable of bursting 

 the prison and freeing itself. I shall come 

 back later to the question of the final 

 emergence and will say no more about it 

 for the present. Let us confine our attention 

 to the troubles of the grub. 



The drying-up of the victuals is, I have 

 said, fatal to it. This is proved by the 

 larvae found baked in their oven; it is also 



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