Under these conditions of equilibrium, the operator's short, clumsy
legs are obviously not enough; a special accessory apparatus is needed
to defy the danger of slipping and to seize the unseizable. And this
apparatus the Lampyris possesses. At the hinder end of the animal we
see a white spot which the lens separates into some dozen short,
fleshy appendages, sometimes gathered into a cluster, sometimes spread
into a rosette. There is your organ of adhesion and locomotion. If he
would fix himself somewhere, even on a very smooth surface, such as a
grass-stalk, the Glow-worm opens his rosette and spreads it wide on
the support, to which it adheres by its own stickiness. The same
organ, rising and falling, opening and closing, does much to assist
the act of progression. In short, the Glow-worm is a new sort of
self-propelled cripple, who decks his hind-quarters with a dainty
white rose, a kind of hand with twelve fingers, not jointed, but
moving in every direction: tubular fingers which do not seize, but
stick.
The same organ serves another purpose: that of a toilet-sponge and
brush. At a moment of rest, after a meal, the Glow-worm passes and
repasses the said brush over his head, back, sides and hinder-parts, a
performance made possible by the flexibility of his spine. This is
done point by point, from one end of the body to the other, with a
scrupulous persistency that proves the great interest which he takes
in the operation. What is his object in thus sponging himself, in
dusting and polishing himself so carefully? It is a question,
apparently, of removing a few atoms of dust or else some traces of
viscidity that remain from the evil contact with the snail. A wash and
brush-up is not superfluous when one leaves the tub in which the
mollusc has been treated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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