104 INSECT LIFE vm 



few days the young larva has hollowed a hole big 

 enough for half its body in the victim's breast. 

 One may then sometimes see the cricket, bitten to 

 the quick, vainly move its antennae and abdominal 

 styles, open and close its empty jaws, and even 

 move a foot, but the larva is safe and searches its 

 vitals with impunity. What an awful nightmare for 

 the paralysed cricket ! This first ration is consumed 

 in six or seven days ; nothing is left but the outer 

 integument, whose every portion remains in place. 

 The larva, whose length is then twelve millimetres, 

 comes out of the body of the cricket through the 

 hole it had made in the thorax. During this opera- 

 tion it moults, and the skin remains caught in the 

 opening. It rests, and then begins on a second 

 ration. Being stronger it has nothing to fear from 

 the feeble movements of the cricket, whose daily 

 increasing torpor has extinguished the last shred of 

 resistance, more than a week having passed since it 

 was wounded ; so it is attacked with no precautions, 

 and usually at the stomach, where the juices are 

 richest. Soon comes the turn of the third cricket, 

 then that of the fourth, which is consumed in ten 

 hours. Of these three victims there remains only 

 the horny integument, whose various portions are 

 dismembered one by one and carefully emptied. If 

 a fifth ration be offered, the larva disdains or hardly 

 touches it, not from moderation, but from an im- 

 perious necessity. 



It should be observed that up to now the larva 

 has ejected no excrement, and that its intestine, in 

 which four crickets have been engulfed, is distended 

 to bursting. Thus, a new ration cannot tempt its 



