We see a repetition of the Gold Beetle’s wretched end. The fight against the agonies of the sting would strike us with horror, if things were happening in a higher world. Thus struggles a Dog tortured by the municipal sausage seasoned with strychnine. At first the wounded Beetle scurries off desperately. Suddenly, he stops and raises himself high on his stiffened legs; he lifts his hinder part, lowers his head and supports himself on his mandibles as though about to turn a somersault. A jolt topples him over. He falls; quickly he stands up again and resumes his unnatural attitude. To look at him you would say that his joints were controlled by wires. He is like an automaton worked by a jerky spring. Another shake, another fall, another recovery: and this goes on for twenty minutes or so. At last the demented Beetle collapses on his back and does not get up again, though his limbs continue to move. Next morning he is absolutely motionless. And what of the larva? Well, though destitute of the layer of fat which would seem to protect the grubs of the Cetonia, the Oryctes and the others, the meagre grub of the Procrustes is so little harmed by the Scorpion’s sting that, a fortnight after the ordeal, it buries itself in the ground and digs itself a cell in which the transformation is effected. Lastly, not long after, the adult emerges from the soil in perfect health. Therefore neither the diet nor the degree of stoutness is responsible for this immunity. Nor is the place occupied in the entomological series, as the Moths will tell us, now that the Beetles have spoken. The first to be questioned is the Zeuzera, whose caterpillar has a calamitous effect upon various trees and shrubs. I take a mother at the moment when she is slipping her long ovipositor into the crevices in the bark of a lilac-tree, to lay her eggs. She is magnificent in her white costume adorned with steel-blue spots. [39] I place her at the Scorpion’s mercy. The business is not protracted. No sooner is the Zeuzera stung than she dies, with no disordered motions. Death is gentle to her. And the caterpillar? After the prick, the caterpillar is as well as before. Restored to the gallery whence I extracted it by splitting its lilac-branch, it works away busily as usual: I can see this by the sawdust ejected through the orifice of the cell. The chrysalis and the Moth come in the summer, according to rule. The Silkworm, which I am able to procure in such numbers as I require from the nurseries at the farms hard by, lends itself much better to experiment. At the end of May, when the rearing is nearly finished, I cause a couple of dozen to be stung. The worms have a fine, chubby skin, into which the sting each time enters easily, producing a copious hemorrhage. The little table on which my curiosity drives me to perpetrate these barbarities is soon covered with splashes of blood like drops of liquid amber.