348 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



cies, and not, as is popularly l)elieved, the old cr 

 the young of the house-fly ; no more than the mid- 

 summer cockchafer {Zantheumia solstitialis. Leach) 

 is the young of the common cockchafer {MeloLontha 

 vulgaris). It Avould be equally correct to say that 

 an ass is the young of a blood horse, or a mouse the 

 young of a rat. Nor is this mistake confined merely 

 to popular belief, for we find it not only stated in 

 books of natural history, but reasons assigned for its 

 correctness. " It is held by some apiarians," says 

 Huish, " that the bee, in emerging from its cell, has 

 attained its full growth ; I would, however, recom- 

 mend to those gentlemen to try to thrust either a 

 bee or a drone into one of the breeding-cells, and 

 he will find that the capacity of their bodies is too 

 large for- the dimensions of the cell."* This experi- 

 ment would not, of course, succeed ; but that does 

 not prove the doctrine, for the author does not take 

 into consideration the great quantity of air by which 

 the body is distended ; and even if this were ex- 

 pelled by putting the bee under the exhausted 

 receiver of an air-pump, the wings and other parts, 

 now become dry and rigid, could not be folded up in 

 the very compact manner in which they existed in the 

 pupa state. 



The fact of the expansion of the wings by the 

 impulsion of air and fluids into their nervures, 

 may be illustrated by the accidental circumstances 

 into which chrysalides may fall. We have men- 

 tioned in a preceding page, that the thread by which 

 a chrysalis is suspended may sometimes snap asun- 

 der. When this happens, and the chrysalis is allowed 

 to remain, it will not usually produce an insect com- 

 plete in all its parts : for the side upon which it lies 

 being pressed against an unyielding substance by its 

 own weight, instead of hanging lightly suspended 

 * Huish on Bees, p. 43. 



