The Life of the Fly 



arrive, the grub shrivels and casts Its skin and 

 the nymph appears, fully clad in a stout, red- 

 dish, horny hide. 



The head is round and large, separated 

 from the thorax by a strangulated furrow, 

 crowned on top and in front with a sort of 

 diadem of six hard, sharp, black spikes, ar- 

 ranged in a semicircle whose concave side 

 faces downward. These spikes decrease 

 slightly in length from the summit to the ends 

 of the arch. Taken together, they suggest 

 the radial crowns which we see the Roman 

 emperors of the Decadence wear on the 

 medals. This six-fold ploughshare is the chief 

 excavating-tool. Lower down, on the median 

 line, the instrument is finished off with a sepa- 

 rate group of two small black spikes, placed 

 close together. 



The thorax is smooth, the wing-cases large, 

 folded under the body like a scarf and coming 

 almost to the middle of the abdomen. This 

 has nine segments, of which four, starting 

 with the second, are armed, on the back, down 

 the middle, with a belt of little horny arches, 

 pale-brown in colour, drawn up parallel to 

 one another, set in the skin by their convex 

 surfaces and finishing at both ends with a hard, 

 black point. Altogether, the belt thus forms 

 56 



