I cut down the boughs that have suffered most damage. From one limb split into fragments I obtain a dozen of the Capricorn’s larvæ. My inspection of the neighbouring hedge-rows provides me with the perfect insect. And now we’ll have it out together, O destroyer of my leafy arbour! You shall make amends to me for your misdeeds; you shall die by the Scorpion. The adults indeed succumb; but the larvæ resist. Lodged in a glass jar, with tiny morsels of the demolished tree, they quietly resume their gnawing. If the provisions do not dry up, the grubs wounded by the Scorpion complete their larval life without accident. The Capricorn of the Oak, Cerambyx heros, behaves in a like fashion. The great horn-wearer perishes; his grub does not mind the sting a jot, for, when restored to its place in the gallery, it tunnels the wood as it did before and completes its development. The result is the same with the Common Cockchafer. The stabbed insect dies in a few minutes; the White Worm, [38] on the contrary, holds out, goes underground and climbs back to the surface to gnaw the lettuce-stalk which I have given it. If my patience as an insect-rearer did not tire, the victim of the accident, from which it quickly recovers, would become a Cockchafer, as may be seen from the paunch sleek and glossy with health. A near kinsman of the Stag-beetle, Dorcus parallelopipedus, whose larva I find in an old tamarisk-stump, adds his evidence to that of the above: the adult insect dies, the larva resists. These instances are sufficient; there is no need to continue on these lines. Cetonia-, Oryctes-, Capricorn-, Cockchafer- and Dorcus-grubs are fat creatures, addicted to a vegetarian diet. Do these plump larvæ owe their immunity to the nature of their victuals? Or, on the other hand, can the fatty stratum, in which the reserves of these insatiable eaters accumulate, neutralize the virulence of the sting? Let us enquire of some lean flesh-eaters. I choose the largest of our Ground-Beetles, Procrusies coriaceus, a saturnine hunter whom I meet at the foot of the walls, disembowelling a Snail. A bold highwayman and built for fighting, he welds his wing-cases into an inviolable cuirass. I pare away a little of his armour behind, in order to render accessible to the Scorpion’s sting the only penetrable part, the upper surface of the abdomen.