The Anthrax 



nurse is flabby and wrinkled, as though borne 

 down by her own weight, like a very slack 

 object. If I move her from her place, she 

 flops and sprawls like a half-filled water-bottle 

 over the new supporting-plane. But the 

 Anthrax' kiss goes on emptying her: soon she 

 is but a sort of shrivelled lard-bag, decreasing 

 from hour to hour, from which the sucker 

 draws a few last oily drains. At length, be- 

 tween the twelfth and the fifteenth day, all 

 that remains of the larva of the Mason-bee is 

 a white granule, hardly as large as a pin's 

 head. 



This granule is the water-bottle drained to 

 the last drop, is the nurse's breast emptied of 

 all its contents. I soften the meagre remnant 

 in water; then, keeping it still immersed, I 

 blow into it through an extremely attenuated 

 glass tube. The skin fills out, distends and 

 resumes the shape of the larva, without there 

 being an outlet anywhere for the compressed 

 air. It is intact, therefore; it is free of any 

 perforation, which would be forthwith re- 

 vealed under the water by an escape of gas. 

 And so, under the Anthrax' cupping-glass, the 

 oily bottle has been drained by a simple trans- 

 piration through the membrane; the substance 

 of the nurse-grub has been transfused into the 



39 



