26 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



the larval life is spent has a layer of earth, some third 

 of an inch thick, for a ceiling. Of what avail is this 

 slender screen against the canicular heat that burns 

 the soil, baking it like a brick to a far greater depth ? 

 The grub's abode at such times acquires a scorching 

 temperature ; when I thrust my hand into it, I feel the 

 moist heat of a Turkish bath. 



The provisions, therefore, even though they have to 

 last but three or four weeks, are exposed to the risk of 

 drying up before that time and becoming uneatable. 

 When, instead of the tender bread of the start, the un- 

 happy worm finds no food for its teeth but a repulsive 

 crust, hard as a pebble and unassailable, it is bound to 

 perish of hunger. And it does, in fact, so perish. I 

 have found numbers of these victims of the August sun 

 who, after eating plentifully of the fresh victuals and 

 digging themselves a cell, had succumbed, unable to 

 continue biting into fare too hard for their teeth. There 

 remained a thick shell, a sort of closed oven, in which 

 the poor wight lay baked and shrivelled up. 



While the worm dies of hunger in the shell turned to 

 stone by desiccation, the full-grown insect that has finished 

 its transformations dies there too, for it is incapable of 

 bursting the enclosure and freeing itself. I shall return 

 later to the final delivery and will linger no more on this 

 point. Let us occupy ourselves solely with the woes of 

 the worm. 



The drying-up of the victuals is, we say, fatal to it. 

 This is proved by the grubs found baked in their oven ; 

 it is also proved, in a more precise fashion, by the follow- 

 ing experiment. In July, the period of active nidifica- 

 tion, I place in wooden or cardboard boxes a dozen pears 

 dug up, that morning, from the native spot. These 



