92 LONDON INSECTS 



itself to it and sucks out the juices till the substance 

 of the larva becomes changed to something very like 

 pure vegetable matter. In this state it is eaten as a 

 delicacy by the Maoris. Something of very much the 

 same kind is found also in Ceylon, where the grub 

 of the Coffee-eating Cockchafer is attacked in the same 

 way by another fungus, which commonly grows an 

 inch or two above the ground and has a yellowish tip. 

 'The grub,' writes a planter who has dug up and 

 examined many of the poor creatures on the lawn in 

 front of his bungalow, ' is to be found an inch or two 

 below the surface, always in the position sketched, 1 the 

 head upwards and body bent as if in suffering.' 



The cherry-tree which Baron Munchausen saw 

 growing out of the stag's head is intelligible. The 

 Baron had himself, for want of shot, fired at it with a 

 charge of cherry stones a few years before. St. Hubert's 

 Stag, which carried a cross between its horns, was 

 miraculous. But what is the explanation of hundreds 

 of Cockchafer grubs being found spiked, always between 

 the eyes and never in any other part of the body, by 

 a living sword ? Does the seed of the fungus stick to 

 the head and root from the outside, or does the grub 

 try to swallow it and fail ? 



If Bacon could have seen a specimen of the fungus 

 blade shooting from the forehead of the grub, he 

 might have left us another chapter of The Wisdom of 

 the Ancients on Minerva springing into life from the 

 head of Jove. 



1 The sketch referred to is printed as a tail-piece to Chapter iv. 



