The Spotted Larinus 
will perish for lack of room at the common 
table. 
The grubs are hatched in a week: little 
white atoms with red heads to them. 
Suppose them to be three in number, as fre- 
quently happens. What have the little crea- 
tures in their larder? Next to nothing. 
The echinops is an exception among the 
Carduacee. Its flowers do not rest upon a 
fleshy receptacle expanded into a heart, like 
the artichoke’s. Let us open one of the 
heads. In the centre, as a common support, 
is a round firm nucleus, a globe hardly as 
large as a peppercorn, fixed on the top of a 
little column which is a continuation of the 
axis of the stem. That is all. 
A scanty, a very scanty provision for three 
consumers. In bulk there is not enough to 
furnish the first few meals of a single grub; 
still less is there enough—for it is very tough 
and unsubstantial—to provide for those fine 
layers of fat which make the grub look as 
sleek as butter and are employed as reserves 
during the transformation. 
Nevertheless, it is in this paltry globule 
and the small column which supports it that 
the three boarders find, their whole life long, 
33 
