I suspect therefore that the Scolia first fashions the outer sac in accordance with the usual method, that is, by distributing the silk uniformly, without any special preparation of one part of the wall more than of another, and that it afterwards changes its method of weaving in order to attend to the main work, the inner shell. In this it apparently imitates the Bembex (Cf. "The Hunting Wasps": chapters 14 to 16.--Translator's Note.), which weaves a sort of eel-trap, whose ample mesh allows it to gather grains of sand outside and encrust them one by one in the silky network, and completes the performance with a cap fitting the entrance to the trap. This provides a circular line of least resistance, along which the casket breaks open afterwards. If the Scolia really works in the same manner, everything is explained: the eel-trap, while still open, enables it to soak with varnish both the inside and the outside of the inner shell, which has to acquire the consistency of parchment; lastly, the cap which completes and closes the structure leaves for the future a circular line capable of splitting easily and neatly. This is enough on the subject of the Scolia-grub. Let us go back to its provender, of whose remarkable structure we as yet know nothing. In order that it may be consumed with the delicate anatomical discretion imposed by the necessity of having fresh food to the last, the Cetonia-grub must be plunged into a state of absolute immobility: any twitchings on its part--as the experiments which I have undertaken go to prove--would discourage our nibbling larva and impede the work of carving, which has to be effected with so much circumspection. It is not enough for the victim to be unable to move from place to place beneath the soil: in addition to this, the contractible power in its sturdy muscular organism must be suppressed. In its normal state, this larva, at the very least disturbance, curls itself up, almost as the Hedgehog does; and the two halves of the ventral surface are laid one against the other. You are quite surprised at the strength which the creature displays in keeping itself thus contracted. If you try to unroll it, your fingers encounter a resistance far greater than the size of the animal would have caused you to suspect. To overcome the resistance of this sort of spring coiled upon itself, you have to force it, so much so that you are afraid, if you persist, of seeing the indomitable spiral suddenly burst and shoot forth its entrails.