Well, in every case their proper diet, seasoned with honey, is fatal.

Whether poisoned or disgusted, they all die in a few days.
A strange result! Honey, the nectar of the flowers, the sole diet of the apiary under its two forms and the sole nourishment of the predatory insect in its adult phase, is for the larva of the same insect an object of insurmountable disgust, and probably a poison.

The transfiguration of the chrysalis surprises me less than this inversion of the appetite.
What change occurs in the stomach of the insect that the adult should passionately seek that which the larva refuses under peril of death?
It is no question of organic debility unable to support a diet too substantial, too hard, or too highly spiced.

The grubs which consume the larva of the Cetoniae, for example (the Rose-chafers), those which feed upon the leathery cricket, and those whose diet is rich in nitrobenzine, must assuredly have complacent gullets and adaptable stomachs.

Yet these robust eaters die of hunger or poison for no greater cause than a drop of syrup, the lightest diet imaginable, adapted to the weakness of extreme youth, and a delicacy to the adult! What a gulf of obscurity in the stomach of a miserable worm! These gastronomic experiments called for a counter-proof.