THE CAPRICORN 143 



drives home, the wedges bite, the wood splits ; and within, in 

 the dry and hollow parts, are revealed groups of various 

 insects who are capable of living through the cold season, and 

 have here taken up their winter quarters. In the low-roofed 

 galleries built by some Beetle the Osmia Bee has piled her 

 cells one above the other. In the deserted chambers and 

 vestibules Megachiles have arranged their leafy jars. In the 

 live wood, filled with juicy sap, the larva of the Capricorn, the 

 chief author of the oak's undoing, has set up its home. 



Truly they are strange creatures, these grubs : bits of in- 

 testines crawling about ! In the middle of autumn I find 

 them of two different ages. The older are almost as thick as 

 one's finger ; the others hardly attain the diameter of a pencil. 

 I find, in addition, the pupa or nymph more or less fully 

 coloured, and the perfect insect ready to leave the trunk 

 when the hot weather comes again. Life inside the wood, 

 therefore, lasts for three years. 



How is this long period of solitude and captivity spent ? 

 In wandering lazily through the thickness of the oak, in making 

 roads whose rubbish serves as food. The horse in the book 

 of Job ' swallows the ground ' in a figure of speech : the 

 Capricorn's grub eats its way literally. With its carpenter's- 

 gouge a strong black mandible, short and without notches, 

 but scooped into a sharp-edged spoon it digs the opening of 

 its tunnel. From the piece cut out the grub extracts the 

 scanty juices, while the refuse accumulates behind him in 

 heaps. The path is devoured as it is made ; it is blocked 

 behind as it makes way ahead. 



Since this harsh work is done with the two gouges, the two 

 curved chisels of the mandibles, the Capricorn-grub requires 

 much strength in the front part of its body, which therefore 

 swells into a sort of pestle. The Buprestis-grub, that other 

 industrious carpenter, adopts a similar form, and even ex- 

 aggerates its pestle. The part that toils and carves hard wood 

 requires to be robust ; the rest of the body, which has but to 

 follow after, continues slim. The essential thing is that the 



