Hypermetamorphosis 1 1 1 



being now a legless maggot, resembling in its appear- 

 ance those of the bees and feeding on honey. Insects 

 which pass through such a succession of larval forms 

 are said to undergo hypermetamorphosis. The fact that 

 in such insects the campodeiform precedes the eruci- 

 form type of larva, seems to indicate that the former 

 is the more primitive, and that the latter has been 

 assumed together with a sluggish habit of life. The 

 newly hatched grub of a Pea-beetle differs from 

 the older larva in possessing three pairs of short 

 legs. By means of these, assisted also by cutting- 

 spines on the prothorax, it is enabled to make its 

 way through from the egg laid outside the pod 

 to the enclosed pea wherein its development is com- 

 pleted, and where it assumes the form of a legless 

 maggot (fig. 70 c). In the vast majority of cases, the 

 conditions suitable to the eruciform type surround 

 the larva from the time of its hatching, and the 

 campodeiform stage is naturally suppressed. But its 

 retention in the few instances where the individual 

 insect has to undergo changed conditions of life 

 during its development gives us a hint as to what 

 must have taken place in the course of the evolution 

 of the insect races (67, 68, 70). 



Adaptation of Larvae. — The form of any larva 

 indeed can be seen to be adaptive to its manner of 

 life. Larvae, like those of the ground-beetles which 

 live by preying upon other weaker creatures, are 

 necessarily active and protected by a hardened skin. 

 Grubs which live an underground life or bore in the 

 wood of plants, and are therefore to a great extent 

 protected, are soft-bodied, though in order that they 

 may be able to feed on the firm vegetable tissues, 

 their head-capsules are hard and their mandibles well 

 developed. The narrow, pointed, hardened body of 

 the wireworm enables the creature to bore its way 



