Then, while I was examining a split twig with my magnifying-glass, the phenomenon which I had given up all hope of observing took place under my eyes.  My bundle of twigs was suddenly alive; scores and scores of the young larvae were emerging from their egg-chambers.  Their numbers were such that my ambition as observer was amply satisfied.  The eggs were ripe, on the point of hatching, and the warmth of the fire, bright and penetrating, had the effect of sunlight in the open.  I was quick to profit by the unexpected piece of good fortune.

At the orifice of the egg-chamber, among the torn fibres of the bark, a little cone-shaped body is visible, with two black eye-spots; in appearance it is precisely like the fore portion of the butter-coloured egg; or, as I have said, like the fore portion of a tiny fish.  You would think that an egg had been somehow displaced, had been removed from the bottom of the chamber to its aperture.  An egg to move in this narrow passage! a walking egg!  No, that is impossible; eggs “do not do such things!” This is some mistake.  We will break open the twig, and the mystery is unveiled.  The actual eggs are where they always were, though they are slightly disarranged.  They are empty, reduced to the condition of transparent skins, split wide open at the upper end.  From them has issued the singular organism whose most notable characteristics are as follows:—­

In its general form, the configuration of the head and the great black eyes, the creature, still more than the egg, has the appearance of an extremely minute fish.  A simulacrum of a ventral fin increases the resemblance.  This apparent fin in reality consists of the two fore-limbs, which, packed in a special sheath, are bent backwards, stretched out against one another in a straight line.  Its small degree of mobility must enable the grub to escape from the egg-shell and, with greater difficulty, from the woody tunnel leading to the open air.  Moving outwards a little from the body, and then moving back again, this lever serves as a means of progression, its terminal hooks being already fairly strong.  The four other feet are still covered by the common envelope, and are absolutely inert.  It is the same with the antennae, which can scarcely be seen through the magnifying-glass.  The organism which has issued from the egg is a boat-shaped body with a fin-shaped limb pointing backwards on the ventral face, formed by the junction of the two fore-limbs.  The segmentation of the body is very clear, especially on the abdomen.  The whole body is perfectly smooth, without the least suspicion of hair.

What name are we to give to this initial phase of the Cigale—­a phase so strange, so unforeseen, and hitherto unsuspected?  Must I amalgamate some more or less appropriate words of Greek and fabricate a portentous nomenclature?  No, for I feel sure that barbarous alien phrases are only a hindrance to science.  I will call it simply the primary larva, as I have done in the case of the Meloides, the Leucospis, and the Anthrax.