Let the soil be moistened and everything is ready for the germination; the preliminary sowing has been done by the vetch and the arachis themselves. Here the plant vies with the animal in maternal cares: the Pine-chafer does no more than the two Leguminosæ. She sows in the ground and that is all, absolutely all. How far removed we are from the Minotaur, so careful of her family! The eggs, ovoids blunted at either end, measure four to five millimetres [65] in length. They are a dull white, firm to the touch, as though supplied with a chalky shell copied from that of a Hen’s egg. This appearance is deceptive: what remains after the hatching is a delicate, flexible, translucent membrane. The chalky look is due to the contents, which show through. The hatching takes place in the middle of August, a month after the laying. How shall I feed the grubs and watch them take their first mouthfuls? I go by what I have learnt from the spots frequented by the grown larvæ. I make a mixture of moist sand and the fine detritus of any leaves whatever browned with decay. The new-born grubs thrive in this environment: I see them opening short galleries here and there, seizing on decayed particles and devouring them with every sign of satisfaction, so much so that, if I had the leisure to continue this rearing for the three or four years required, I should certainly obtain larvæ ripe for transformation. But there is no need to waste my time in rearing them thus: by digging in the fields I obtain the fully developed grub. It is magnificently fat, bent into a hook, a creamy white in front and an earthy brown behind, because of the wallet in which it hoards the stercoral treasure destined later to plaster and cement the cell in which the nymphosis will take place. All these hook-shaped wallet-bearers, Oryctes- and Cetonia-larvæ, Cockchafer- and Anoxia-grubs, are hoarders of fæcal matter: they reserve in their brown paunches the wherewithal to build themselves a lodging when the time comes. I collect my fat grubs in a sandy soil, where lean grass-tufts grow, at a great distance from any resinous tree except the cypress, which the adult insect does not visit. The Cockchafer, therefore, after her regulation frolics on the pines, came to this place from afar to lay her eggs. She feeds frugally on pine-needles; her larva calls for the remnants of any leaves softened by underground putrefaction. This is why the nuptial paradise is deserted.