Notwithstanding his stalwart appearance the Capricorn cannot leave the tree-trunk by his own unaided efforts. The truth is that his way is prepared for him by the grub—that bit of intestine. Some presentiment—to us an unfathomable mystery—causes the Capricorn-grub to leave its peaceful stronghold in the very heart of the oak and wriggle towards the outside, where its foe the Woodpecker is quite likely to gobble it up. At the risk of its life it stubbornly digs and gnaws to the very bark. It leaves only the thinnest film, the slenderest screen, between itself and the world at large. Sometimes, even, the rash one opens the doorway wide. This is the Capricorn’s way out. The insect has but to file the screen a little with his mandibles, to bump against it with his forehead, in order to bring it down. He will even have nothing at all to do when the doorway is open, as often happens. The unskilled carpenter, burdened with his extravagant head-dress, will come out from the darkness through this opening when the summer heat arrives. As soon as the grub has attended to the important business of making a doorway into the world, it begins to busy itself with its transformation into a Beetle. First, it requires space for the purpose. So it retreats some distance down its gallery, and in the side of the passage digs itself a transformation-chamber more sumptuously furnished and barricaded than any I have ever seen. It is a roomy hollow with curved walls, three to four inches in length and wider than it is high. The width of the cell gives the insect a certain degree of freedom of movement when the time comes for forcing the barricade, which is more than a close-fitting case would do. The barricade—a door which the larva builds as a protection from danger—is twofold, and often threefold. Outside, it is a stack of woody refuse, of particles of chopped timber; inside, a mineral lid, a concave cover, all in one piece, of a chalky white. Pretty often, but not always, there is added to these two layers an inner casing of shavings. Behind this threefold door the larva makes its arrangements for its transformation. The sides of the chamber are scraped, thus providing a sort of down formed of ravelled woody fibres, broken into tiny shreds. This velvety stuff is fixed on the wall, in a thick coating, as fast as it is made. The chamber is thus padded throughout with a fine swan’s-down, a delicate precaution taken by the rough grub out of kindness for the tender creature it will become when it has cast its skin.