Though all the food around it is alike and all is to its taste, nevertheless it tackles exclusively the floor of its cell, a floor continued by the bulky sphere in which bites will be permissible in every direction, as the consumer pleases. Can any one explain why this particular spot is chosen as the starting-point, when there is nothing to distinguish it, from the point of view of food? Could the tiny creature be warned of the proximity of the outer air by the effect which a thin wall has on its sensitive skin? If so, how is this effect produced? Besides, what does a grub, that moment born, know of outside dangers? I am quite in the dark. Or rather I begin to see daylight. I recognize once again, under another aspect, what was taught me some years ago by the Scolia-wasps [22] and the Sphex-wasps, [23] those scientific eaters, those skilful anatomists, who can discriminate so well between the lawful and the unlawful and are consequently able to devour their prey without killing it until the end of the meal. The Sacred Beetle has his own complicated art of eating. Though he need not trouble about the preservation of the victuals, which are not liable to go bad, he has nevertheless to guard against ill-timed mouthfuls, which would rob him of his shelter. Of these dangerous mouthfuls, the earliest are the most to be feared, because of the creature’s weakness and the thinness of the wall. As its protection, therefore, the grub has, in its own way, the primal inspiration without which none would be able to live; it obeys the imperious voice of instinct, which says: ‘There shalt thou bite and no elsewhere.’ And, respecting all the rest, however tempting, it bites at the prescribed spot; it eats into the pear at the bottom of the neck. In a few days it has worked its way deep down into the mass, where it waxes big and fat, transforming the filthy material into a plump larva gleaming with health, ivory-white with slate-coloured reflections and without a speck of dirt upon it. The matter which has disappeared, or rather which has been remelted in life’s crucible, leaves empty a round cell into which the grub fits itself, curving its back under the spherical dome and bending double. The time has come for a sight stranger than any yet displayed to me by the industrial prowess of an insect. Anxious to observe the grub in the intimacy of its home, I open in the belly of the pear a little peep-hole half a centimetre [24] square. The head of the recluse at once appears in the opening, to enquire what is happening. The breach is perceived. The head disappears. I can just see the white back turning about in the narrow cabin; and, then and there, the window which I have made is closed with a soft, brown paste, which soon hardens.