Story Book of Science by Jean-Henri Fabre The Big Eaters Free Educational Audiobooks Kids.
chapter 22 of the storybook of science this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org recording by jill ingle the storybook of science by jean henry fabre translated by florence bichnell the big eaters insects propagate themselves by eggs which they lay with admirable foresight where the young will be sure to find nourishment the little creature that comes from the egg is a larva a feeble grub which most often has to shift for itself procure at its own risk food and shelter the most difficult thing in this world in these painful beginnings it cannot expect any help from its mother dead sometime before for in insect life the parents generally die before the hatching of the eggs that produce the young without delay the little larva sets to work it eats it is its sole business and a serious one on which its future depends it eats not only to keep up its strength from day to day but above all to acquire the plumpness necessary for its future metamorphosis i must tell you and this perhaps will surprise you that an insect ceases to grow after attaining its final perfect form it is known too that there are insects among others the butterfly of the silkworm that do not take any nourishment at all a cat is at first a tiny little pink-nosed creature so small that it could rest in the hollow of the hand in one or two months it is a pretty kitten that amuses itself at a mere nothing and with its nimble paw whips the wisp of paper that one throws before it another year and it is a tomcat that patiently watches for mice or joins battle with its rivals on the roof but whether a tiny creature hardly able to open its little blue eyes or a pretty playful kitten or a big quarrelsome tomcat it has always the form of a cat it is otherwise with insects the swallow tail under its form of butterfly is not first small then medium then large when for the first time it opens its wings and takes flight it is as large as it ever will be when it comes out from underground where it lived as a grub when for the first time it appears in the daylight the june bug is such as you know it there are little cats but no little swallow tails nor little june bugs after the metamorphosis an insect is what it will be to the end but i've seen small june bugs flying around the willows in the evening objected jewels those little june bugs are of a different kind they will always remain the same never will they grow and become common june bugs any more than a cat would grow into a tiger which it resembles so much the grub alone grows at first very small on coming out of the egg little by little it acquires a size in conformity with the future insect it gathers the materials that the metamorphosis will use materials for the wings antennae legs and all those things that the larva does not have but that the insect must have out of what will the big green worm that lives in dead wood and must someday become a stag beetle make the enormous branched mandibles and the robust horny covering of the perfect insect of what will the larva make the long antennae of the capricorn of what will the caterpillar make the large wings of the swallow tail of that which the caterpillar larva and worm amass now with thrifty hoarding of life-supporting matter if the little pink-nosed cat were born without ears paws tail fur mustaches if it were simply a little ball of flesh and should someday have to acquire all at once while asleep ears paws tail fur mustaches and many other things is it not true that this work of life would necessitate materials gathered together beforehand and held in reserve in the fatty tissues of the animal no thing can be made from nothing the smallest hair of the cat's mustache shoots forth at the expense of the substance of the animal substance which it acquires by eating the...