The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles 



delivery does not seem difficult to me: there 

 is hardly three-quarters of an inch to pierce. 

 Not one emerges. When all is silence, I 

 open my apparatus. The captives, from 

 first to last, are dead. A vestige of saw- 

 dust, less than a pinch of snuff, represents all 

 their work. 



I expected more from those sturdy tools, 

 their mandibles. But, as we have seen be- 

 fore, the tool does not make the workman. 1 

 In spite of their boring-implements, the her- 

 mits die in my cases for lack of skill. I 

 subject others to less arduous tests. I en- 

 close them in spacious reed-stumps, equal in 

 diameter to the natal cell. The obstacle to 

 be pierced is the natural diaphragm, a yield- 

 ing partition two or three millimetres 2 thick. 

 Some free themselves; others cannot. The 

 less valiant ones succumb, stopped by the 

 frail barrier. What would it be if they had 

 to pass through a thickness of oak? 



We are now persuaded: despite his stal- 

 wart appearance, the Capricorn is powerless 



1 Cf. The Life and Love of the Insect: chap. iii. " The 

 tool does not make the workman. The insect exerts its 

 gifts as a specialist with any kind of tool wherewith it is 

 supplied. It can saw with a plane or plane with a saw, 

 like the model workman of whom Franklin tells us." — 

 Translator's Note. 



2 .078 to .117 inch. — Translator's Note. 



198 



