第74章 CHAPTER XV THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE GRUB(2)

The same method is followed for the remaining experiments. I put the bluebottle's eggs to hatch on a piece of meat and leave the worms to do their work as they please. The lean tissues, whether of mutton, beef or pork, no matter which, are not turned into liquid; they become a pea soup of a clarety brown. The liver, the lung, the spleen are attacked to better purpose, without, however, getting beyond the state of a semi-fluid jam, which easily mixes with water and even appears to dissolve in it. The brains do not liquefy either: they simply melt into a thin gruel.

On the other hand, fatty substances, such as beef suet, lard and butter, do not undergo any appreciable change. Moreover, the worms soon dwindle away, incapable of growing. This sort of food does not suit them. Why? Apparently because it cannot be liquefied by the reagent disgorged by the worms. In the same way, ordinary pepsin does not attack fatty substances; it takes pancreatin to reduce them to an emulsion. This curious analogy of properties, positive for albuminous, negative for fatty matter, proclaims the similarity and perhaps the identity of the dissolvent discharged by the grubs and the pepsin of the higher animals.

Here is another proof: the usual pepsin does not dissolve the epidermis, which is a material of a horny nature. That of the maggots does not dissolve it either. I can easily rear bluebottle grubs on dead crickets whose bellies I have first opened; but I do not succeed if the morsel be left intact: the worms are unable to perforate the succulent paunch; they are stopped by the cuticle, on which their reagent refuses to act. Or else I give them frogs' hind legs, stripped of their skin. The flesh turns to broth and disappears to the bone. If I do not peel the legs, they remain intact in the midst of the vermin. Their thin skin is sufficient to protect them.

This failure to act upon the epidermis explains why the bluebottle at work on the animal declines to lay her eggs on the first part that comes handy. She needs the delicate membrane of the nostrils, eyes or throat, or else some wound in which the flesh is laid bare.

No other place suits her, however excellent for flavor and darkness. At most, finding nothing better when my stratagems interfere, she persuades herself to dab a few eggs under the axilla of a plucked bird or in the groin, two points at which the skin is thinner than elsewhere.

With her maternal foresight, the bluebottle knows to perfection the choice surfaces, the only ones liable to soften and run under the influence of the reagent dribbled by the newborn grubs. The chemistry of the future is familiar to her, though she does not use it for her own feeding; motherhood, that great inspirer of instinct, teaches her all about it.

Scrupulous though she be in choosing exactly where to lay her eggs, the bluebottle does not trouble about the quality of the provisions intended for her family's consumption. Any dead body suits her purpose. Redi, the Italian scientist who first exploded the old, foolish notion of worms begotten of corruption, fed the vermin in his laboratory with meat of very different kinds. In order to make his tests the more conclusive, he exaggerated the largess of the dining hall. The diet was varied with tiger and lion flesh, bear and leopard, fox and wolf, mutton and beef, horseflesh, donkey flesh and many others, supplied by the rich menagerie of Florence.

This wastefulness was unnecessary: wolf and mutton are all the same to an unprejudiced stomach.

A distant disciple of the maggot's biographer, I look at the problem in a light which Redi never dreamt of. Any flesh of one of the higher animals suits the fly's family. Will it be the same if the food supplied be of a lower organism and consist of fish, for instance, of frog, mollusk, insect, centipede? Will the worms accept these viands and, above all, can they manage to liquefy them, which is the first and foremost condition?

I serve a piece of raw whiting. The flesh is white, delicate, partly translucent, easy for our stomachs to digest and no less suited to the grub's dissolvent. It turns into an opalescent fluid, which runs like water. In fact, it liquefies in much the same way as hard-boiled white of egg. The worms at first wax fat, as long as the conditions allow of some solid eyots remaining;then, when foothold fails, threatened with drowning in the too fluid broth, they creep up the side of the glass, anxious and restless to be off. They climb to the cotton-wool stopper of the test-tube and try to bolt through the wadding. Endowed with stubborn perseverance, nearly all of them decamp in spite of the obstacle. The test-tube with the white of egg showed me a similar exodus. Although the fare suits them, as their growth witnesses, the worms cease feeding and make a point of escaping when death by drowning is imminent.

With other fish, such as skate and sardines, with the flesh of frogs and tree frogs, the meat simply dissolves into a porridge.

Hashes of slug, Scolopendra or praying mantis furnish the same result.

In all these preparations, the dissolving agent of the worms is as much in evidence as when butcher's meat is employed. Moreover, the grubs seem satisfied with the queer dish which my curiosity prescribes for them; they thrive amidst the victuals and undergo their transformation into pupae.

The conclusion, therefore, is much more general than Redi imagined.

Any meat, no matter whether of a higher or lower order, suits the bluebottle for the settlement of her family. The carcasses of furred and feathered animals are the favorite victuals, probably because of their richness, which allows of plentiful layings; but, should the occasion demand it, the others are also accepted, without inconvenience. Any carrion that has lived the life of an animal comes within the domain of these scavengers.