FABRE'S BOOK OF INSECTS 



emptying her : soon she is but a sort of shrivelled bladder, 

 growing smaller and smaller from hour to hour. At 

 length, between the twelfth and fifteenth day, all that re- 

 mains of the Mason-bee's larva is a little white grain, 

 hardly as large as a pin's head. 



If I soften this small remnant in water, and then blow 

 into it through a very fine glass tube, the skin fills out 

 and resumes the shape of the larva. There is no outlet 

 anywhere for the compressed air. It is intact : it is no- 

 where broken. This proves that, under the cupping- 

 glass of the Anthrax, the skin has been drained through 

 its pores. 



The devouring grub, in making its attack, chooses its 

 moment very cunningly. It is but an atom. Its mother, 

 a feeble Fly, has done nothing to help it. She has no 

 weapons; and she is quite incapable of penetrating the 

 Mason-bee's fortress. The future meal of the Anthrax 

 has not been paralysed, nor injured in any way. The 

 parasite arrives we shall presently see how; it arrives, 

 scarcely visible, and having made its preparations it in- 

 stalls itself upon its monstrous victim, whom it is going 

 to drain to the very husk. And the victim, though not 

 paralysed nor in any way lacking in vitality, lets it have 

 its way, and is sucked dry without a tremor or a quiver of 

 resistance. No corpse could show greater indifference 

 to a bite. 



Had the Anthrax-grub appeared upon the scene 



[254] 



