xvi The Life of the Spider 



Shall I sing the fairy-like birth of the nymphs 

 of the Anthophagus, a transparent monster, 

 with a bull's snout, that seems carved out of 

 a block of crystal ? Would you behold the 

 Flesh-fiy, the common Blue-bottle, daughter 

 of the maggot, as she issues from the earth ? 

 Listen to our author : 



' She disjoints her head into two movable 

 halves, which, each distended with its great red 

 eye, by turns separate and reunite. In the 

 intervening space, a large glassy hernia rises 

 and disappears, disappears and rises. When 

 the two halves move asunder, with one eye 

 forced back to the right and the other to the 

 left, it is as though the insect were splitting 

 its brain-pan in order to expel the contents. 

 Then the hernia rises, blunt at the end and 

 swollen into a great knob. Next, the forehead 

 closes and the hernia retreats, leaving visible 

 only a kind of shapeless muzzle. In short, 

 a frontal pouch, with deep pulsations mo- 

 mentarily renewed, becomes the instrument 

 of deliverance, the pestle wherewith the newly- 

 hatched Dipteron bruises the sand and causes 



