Note 1 — Chapter xiv · THE GEOTRUPES: THE LARVA

Since the occasion presents itself, let me say a few more words on the insect’s powers of resisting cold. Some years ago, while looking for Scolia-cocoons in a heap of mould, I had made a large collection of the grubs of Cetonia aurata.1 I placed my loot in a flower-pot with a few handfuls of decayed vegetable matter, just enough to cover the insects’ backs. I intended to draw upon them for certain enquiries which I was making at the time. The pot remained in the open air; and I forgot all about it. A cold snap came, accompanied by sharp frost and snow. Then I remembered my Cetoniæ, so ill-protected against this kind of weather. I found the contents of the pot hardened into a conglomeration of earth, dead leaves, ice, snow and shrivelled grubs. It was a sort of almond-rock, in which the larvæ stood for the almonds. Sorely tried by the cold as they were, the colony ought to have perished. But no: when the thaw arrived, the frozen larvæ came to life again and began to swarm about as though nothing unusual had happened.