The White-faced Decticus: the Eggs 



you ; you leap about gaily in the cage where 

 I have housed you. It would be easy to rear 

 you, I can see, but it would not give me much 

 fresh information. Let us then part com- 

 pany. I restore you to liberty. In return 

 for what you have taught me, I bestow upon 

 you the grass and the Locusts in the garden. 

 Thanks to you, I know that Grasshoppers, 

 in order to leave the ground in which the 

 eggs are laid, possess a provisional shape, a 

 primary larval stage, which keeps those 

 too cumbrous parts, the long legs and 

 antennae, swathed in a common sheath; I 

 know that this sort of mummy, fit only to 

 lengthen and shorten itself a little, has for an 

 organ of locomotion a hernia in the neck, 

 a throbbing blister, an original piece of 

 mechanism which I have never seen used 

 elsewhere as an aid to progression. 1 



1 This essay was written prior to that on the Grey 

 Flesh-flies, who employ a similar method. Cf. The Life 

 of the Fly: chap. x. Translator's Note. 



245 



