animals

Saturday, January 12, 2008

There is a grub entitled the 'faggot-bearer', as strange a
creature as is known. Its head projects outside its shell, mottled
in colour, and its feet are near the end or apex, as is the case
with grubs in general; but the rest of its body is cased in a tunic as
it were of spider's web, and there are little dry twigs about it, that
look as though they had stuck by accident to the creature as it went
walking about. But these twig-like formations are naturally
connected with the tunic, for just as the shell is with the body of
the snail so is the whole superstructure with our grub; and they do
not drop off, but can only be torn off, as though they were all of a
piece with him, and the removal of the tunic is as fatal to this
grub as the removal of the shell would be to the snail. In course of
time this grub becomes a chrysalis, as is the case with the
silkworm, and lives in a motionless condition. But as yet it is not
known into what winged condition it is transformed.