FABRE'S BOOK OF INSECTS 



and rejected, and heaped up in a corner. My study 

 was crammed with them. In vain I ripped up the 

 cocoons; I found nothing. It needed the sturdiest faith 

 to make me persevere. 



At last I saw, or seemed to see, something move on 

 the Bee's larva. Was it an illusion'? Was it a bit 

 of down stirred by my breath? It was not an illusion; 

 it was not a bit of down; it was really and truly a 

 grub ! But at first I thought the discovery unimportant, 

 because I was so greatly puzzled by the little creature's 

 appearance. 



In a couple of days I was the owner of ten such worms 

 and had placed each of them in a glass tube, together 

 with the Bee-grub on which it wriggled. It was so tiny 

 that the least fold of skin concealed it from my sight. 

 After watching it one day through the lens I sometimes 

 failed to find it again on the morrow. I would think 

 it was lost : then it would move, and become visible once 

 more. 



For some time the belief had been growing in me that 

 the Anthrax had two larval forms, a first and a second, 

 the second being the form I knew, the grub we have al- 

 ready seen at its meals. Was this new discovery, I 

 asked myself, the first form? Time showed me that 

 it was. For at last I saw my little worms transform 

 themselves into the grub I have already described, and 

 make their first start at draining their victims with kisses. 



[268] 



