Is the Snail really dead? Not at all, for I am free to resuscitate the seeming corpse. After two or three days of that singular condition which is no longer life and yet not death, I isolate the patient and, although this is not really necessary to success, I give him a douche which will represent the shower so dear to the able-bodied mollusc. In about a couple of days, my prisoner, but lately injured by the Glow-worm's treachery, is restored to his normal state. He revives, in a manner; he recovers movement and sensibility. He is affected by the stimulus of a needle; he shifts his place, crawls, puts out his tentacles, as though nothing unusual had occurred. The general torpor, a sort of deep drunkenness, has vanished outright. The dead returns to life. What name shall we give to that form of existence which, for a time, abolishes the power of movement and the sense of pain? I can see but one that is approximately suitable: anaesthesia. The exploits of a host of Wasps whose flesh-eating grubs are provided with meat that is motionless though not dead[2] have taught us the skilful art of the paralyzing insect, which numbs the locomotory nerve-centres with its venom. We have now a humble little animal that first produces complete anaesthesia in its patient. Human science did not in reality invent this art, which is one of the wonders of our latter-day surgery. Much earlier, far back in the centuries, the Lampyris and, apparently, others knew it as well. The animal's knowledge had a long start of ours; the method alone has changed. Our operators proceed by making us inhale the fumes of ether or chloroform; the insect proceeds by injecting a special virus that comes from the mandibular fangs in infinitesimal doses. Might we not one day be able to benefit by this hint? What glorious discoveries the future would have in store for us, if we understood the beastie's secrets better! [Footnote 2: Cf. _The Hunting Wasps_, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: _passim_.--_Translator's Note_.] What does the Lampyris want with anaesthetical talent against a harmless and moreover eminently peaceful adversary, who would never begin the quarrel of his own accord? I think I see. We find in Algeria a Beetle known as _Drilus maroccanus_, who, though non-luminous, approaches our Glow-worm in his organization and especially in his habits. He too feeds on land molluscs. His prey is a Cyclostome with a graceful spiral shell, tight-closed with a stony lid which is attached to the animal by a powerful muscle. The lid is a movable door which is quickly shut by the inmate's mere withdrawal into his house and as easily opened when the hermit goes forth. With this system of closing, the abode becomes inviolable; and the Drilus knows it.