We alone know how life's pageant closes, we alone can foresee our end, we alone profess devotion to the dead. Of these high matters none other has any suspicion. When would-be scientists proclaim aloud, when they declare that a wretched insect knows the trick of simulating death, we will ask them to look more closely and not to confound the hypnosis due to terror with the pretence of a condition unknown to the animal world. Ours alone is the clear vision of an end, ours alone the glorious instinct of the beyond. Here, filling its modest part, speaks the voice of entomology, saying: "Have confidence; never did an instinct fail to keep its promises." CHAPTER XVI THE CRIOCERES I am a stubborn disciple of St. Thomas the Apostle and, before I agree to anything, I want to see and touch it, not once, but twice, thrice, an indefinite number of times, until my incredulity bows beneath the weight of evidence. Well, the Rhynchites[1] have told us that the build does not determine the instincts, that the tools do not decide the trade. And now, yes, the Crioceres come and add their testimony. I question three of them, all common, too common, in my paddock. At the proper season, I have them before my eyes, without searching for them, whenever I want to ask them for information. [Footnote 1: A genus of Weevils, the essays upon whom will appear in a later volume to be entitled _The Life of Weevil_.--_Translator's Note_.] The first is the Crioceris of the Lily, or Lily-beetle. Since Latin words offend our modesty let us just once mention her scientific name, _Crioceris merdigera_, LIN., without translating it, or, above all, repeating it. Decency forbids. I have never been able to understand why natural history need inflict upon a lovely flower or an engaging animal an odious name. As a matter of fact, our Crioceris, so ill-treated by the nomenclators, is a sumptuous creature. She is nicely shaped, neither too large nor too small, and a beautiful coral red, with jet-black head and legs. Everybody knows her who in the spring has ever glanced at the lily, when its stem is beginning to show in the centre of the rosette of leaves. A Beetle, of less than the average size and coloured sealing-wax red, is perched up on the plant. Your hand goes out to seize her. Forthwith, paralysed with fright, she drops to the ground. Let us wait a few days and return to the lily, which is gradually growing taller and beginning to show its buds, gathered together in a bundle. The red insect is still there. Further, the leaves, which are seriously bitten into, are reduced to tatters and soiled with little heaps of greenish ordure. It looks as if some witchcraft had mashed up the leaves and then splashed the mess all over the place. Well, this filth moves, travels slowly along. Let us overcome our repugnance and poke the heaps with a straw. We uncover, indeed we unclothe an ugly, pot-bellied, pale-orange larva. It is the grub of the Crioceris.