The difficulty is overcome in this way. While the leg is being liberated it is not rigid, as it will presently be. It is soft and highly flexible. Where it is exposed to view I see it bending and curving: it is as supple as elastic cord. And farther on, where it is hidden, it is certainly still softer, it is almost fluid. The teeth of the saw are there, but have none of their future sharpness. The spikes lie backwards when the leg is about to be drawn back: as it emerges they stand up and become solid. A few minutes later the leg has attained the proper state of stiffness.
And now the fine tunic is wrinkled and rumpled, and [[247]]pushed back along the body towards the tip. Except at this point the Locust is bare. After a rest of twenty minutes he makes a supreme effort; he raises himself as he hangs, and grabs hold of his cast skin. Then he climbs higher, and fixes himself to the wire of the cage with his four front feet. He loosens the empty husk with one last shake, and it falls to the ground. The Locust’s transformation is conducted in much the same way as the Cicada’s.
The insect is now standing erect, and therefore the flexible wings are in the right position. They are no longer curved backwards like the petals of a flower, they are no longer upside down; but they still look shabby and insignificant. All that we see is a few wrinkles, a few winding furrows, which tell us that the stumps are bundles of cunningly folded material, arranged so as to take up as little space as possible.
Very gradually they expand, so gradually that their unfolding cannot be seen even under the microscope. The process continues for three hours. Then the wings and wing-cases stand up on the Locust’s back like a huge set of sails, sometimes colourless, sometimes pale-green, like the Cicada’s wings at the beginning. One is amazed at their size when one thinks of the paltry bundles that represented them at first. How could so much stuff find room there?
The fairy tale tells us of a grain of hempseed that [[248]]contained the under-linen of a princess. Here is a grain that is even more astonishing. The one in the story took years and years to sprout and multiply, till at last it yielded the hemp required for the trousseau: the Locust’s tiny bundle supplies a sumptuous set of sails in three hours. They are formed of exquisitely fine gauze, a network of innumerable tiny bars.
In the wing of the larva we can see only a few uncertain outlines of the future lace-work. There is nothing to suggest the marvellous fabric whose every mesh will have its form and place arranged for it, with absolute exactness. Yet it is there, as the oak is inside the acorn.
There must be something to make the matter of the wing shape itself into a sheet of gauze, into a labyrinth of meshes. There must be an original plan, an ideal pattern which gives each atom its proper place. The stones of our buildings are arranged in accordance with the architect’s plan; they form an imaginary building before they exist as a real one. In the same way a Locust’s wing, that sumptuous piece of lace emerging from a miserable sheath, speaks to us of another Architect, the Author of the plans which Nature must follow in her labours. [[249]]