That the Hedgehog, the appointed exterminator of Vipers, should be endowed with the prerogatives essential to her calling is strictly logical. In the same way, the Bee-eater, the handsomest bird of Mediterranean provinces, crams his crop with impunity with live Wasps; in the same way, the Cuckoo suffers from no irritation when he fills his stomach with a barbed wire entanglement of stinging hairs from the Processionary Caterpillar. [37] The function exercised will have it so. But why need the larva of the Cetonia safeguard itself against the Scorpion, whom she probably never meets? We dare not believe in privileges; rather do we suspect a general aptitude. The Cetonia-larva resists the Scorpion’s sting, not as a Cetonia, but as a grub, a preparatory phase on the way to a higher organization. If so, all the larvæ, in a greater or lesser degree, according to their robustness, must possess similar powers of resistance. What does experiment say on the subject? It behooves us to exempt from the test the weaker grubs, of a delicate constitution. To them a mere prick, without the aid of the poison, would mean a serious and often fatal wound. The point of a needle would gravely injure them. What would it be with the brutal stiletto, even though not poisoned? What we need is a few corpulent grubs which would think little of a perforated belly. And here I have the very thing I want. An old olive-stump softened underground by decay, provides me with the larva of the Rhinoceros Beetle. It is a plump sausage, as thick as a man’s thumb. When stung by the Scorpion, the paunchy grub glides among the scraps of decayed olive-wood with which I have furnished a glass jar; heedless of its mishap, it works its jaws so lustily that, eight months later, having thrived and waxed fat, it is preparing its cell for the metamorphosis. It has passed through the dreadful ordeal unscathed. As for the adult insect, we have already seen what it does. Stung on the upper surface of the abdomen, under the lifted wing-cases, the colossus soon topples over and feebly kicks its legs about in the air. All movement ceases in three or four days at most. The powerful creature dies; its grub loses nothing in either strength or appetite. This instance of correct prevision on my part is confirmed by a number of others. In front of my door are two old cherry-laurels, magnificently green at all times of the year. A Capricorn is ruining them for me. This is the little Cerambyx cerdo, the usual inhabitant of the hawthorn. The aroma of prussic acid, instead of repelling him, attracts him; the horned dandy is well acquainted with it, thanks to his long experience of the clusters of the hawthorn-blossoms with their searching smell. This alien tree suits him so well for establishing his family that the axe will have to intervene if I want to save what remains.