The Bee-eating Philanthus 



without danger of immersion. With too 

 fluid a mixture there would be a risk of death 

 by drowning. Lastly I install a moderately- 

 developed larva on each of my albuminous 

 cakes. 



The dish of my inventing does not incite 

 dislike: far from it. The grubs attack it 

 without hesitation and consume it with every 

 appearance of the usual appetite. Things 

 could not go better if the food had not been 

 altered by my culinary recipes. Everything 

 goes down, including the morsels in which 

 I feared that I had overdone the addition 

 of albumen. And — an even more import- 

 ant point — the Osmia-larvae fed in this 

 manner attain their normal dimensions and 

 spin their cocoons, from which adult insects 

 issue in the following year. Notwithstand- 

 ing the albuminous regimen, the cycle of the 

 evolution is achieved without impediment. 



What are we to conclude from all this? 

 I feel greatly embarrassed. Omne vivum 

 ex ovo, the physiologists tell us. Every ani- 

 mal is carnivorous, in its first beginnings: it 

 is formed and nourished at the cost of its 

 egg, in which albumen predominates. The 

 highest, the mammal, adheres to this diet for 

 a long time : it has its mother's milk, rich in 

 casein, another isomer of albumen. The 

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