Busily bustling to and fro on the parts that are still uncovered, they scale the reefs and promontories formed by the reptile’s coils and from these points, protected against the perilous flood, they fish for their favourite titbit. Here is a grub near the bank, one not too large and for that reason all the more tender. One of the gluttons sees it, cautiously approaches the depths, snaps with his mandibles and pulls, uprooting his prey. The plump little sausage emerges, wriggling. As soon as it is on dry land, the victim is disembowelled and rapturously crunched up. Not a scrap is left. The morsel is often shared, two collaborators tugging in opposite directions, but without a scuffle. Maggot-fishing is carried on in this way at every point of the shore. The catch is not abundant, for most of the fry are some distance from the mainland, in deep waters where the Saprini do not venture. They never risk wetting their feet. However, the tide withdraws by degrees, absorbed by the sand and evaporated by the sun. The grubs retreat under the corpse; the Saprini follow them. The massacre becomes general. A few days later, we remove the Snake. There are no maggots left. Nor are there any in the sand, making ready for the metamorphosis. The horde has disappeared: it has been eaten. The extermination is so complete that, to obtain pupæ, I have to resort to rearing them in private, guarding the larvæ against the invasion of the Saprini. The earthenware pans in the open air, though thoroughly searched, never yield me any, however numerous the maggots were at the outset. During my earlier experiments, when as yet I had no suspicion of the massacre, I could not get over my surprise when, after noting an abundance of vermin under this or that piece of carrion a few days before, I no longer found anything, even in the sand. I should have concluded that the occupants had migrated in a body, had it been permissible to imagine a maggot making a long journey through a waterless world. The Saprini, those lovers of fat sausages are entrusted with the task of thinning out the Grey Fly, of whose twenty thousand offspring only a few will survive, just enough to maintain the race within proper limits. They flock about the dead Mole or Adder; but, kept at a distance by the too liquid sanies and, for that matter, able to live on a few frugal mouthfuls, they wait until the maggots’ work is finished. Then, the liquefaction of the corpse completed, they slaughter the liquidators. To purge the soil swiftly of life’s offal, the scavenging maggot multiplies its legions; then, having itself become a peril by reason of its numbers, it disappears, exterminated, when its cleansing task is done.