BURROWS IN THE EARTH. 63 



black hail's are present, but the warts are colourless : the 

 head is clear as glass, and the two black eyes, so conspicu- 

 ous in the egg and newly-hatched grub, are again visible. 

 In about twenty minutes the black spots begin to appear, 

 and in about four hours become as distinct and the head as 

 black as before the moult. When the grub has regained 

 its colour, it again begins to eat, and eats away night and 

 day without stopping, for four or five days more. It then 

 sickens again for its last moult, and this is performed in 

 the same way as the first : tut this time the spots, warts 

 and bristles are cast with the skin and appear no more. 

 The grub is now of a pale delicate green colour, except 

 the yellow patch near each end, which it still retains. It 

 has now done with eating : when hard enough and strong 

 enough after this last moult, it marches to the stem of the 

 / bush, and quietly descends till it reaches the earth : some- 

 times it crawls along a hanging branch and drops from the 

 extremity. 



The object of gaining the earth is to burrow beneath its 

 surface ; and as soon as the grub once feels the soil, he 

 begins forcing his way into it head foremost, after the 

 fashion of a mole. When he is deep enough to answer his 

 pm-pose, the depth varying, by the way, from two to eight 

 inches, according to the hardness or lightness of the soil, 

 he makes a little oblong cell in the earth, and therein spins 

 or constructs a tough black cocoon, attached all round to 

 the walls of the cell : although I say spins, the material he 

 uses is not silk or thread, but something between silk and 

 glue, or what we might suppose to arise from the harden- 

 ing of fluid silk, an illustration rather of the uncouthest, 

 but for want of a better, it must go. In this cocoon or 

 case he disposes himself to await the change to a chrysalis, 

 and soon after to a fly. 



