VIII LARVA AND NYMPH 105 



gluttony, and henceforward it only thinks about 

 making a silken dwelling. Its repast has lasted 

 from ten to twelve days without a pause. Its length 

 now measures from twenty-five to thirty millimetres, 

 and its greatest width from five to six. Its usual 

 shape, somewhat enlarged behind and narrowed in 

 front, agrees with that general in larvae of Hymen- 

 optera. It has fourteen segments^ including the 

 head, which is very small, with weak mandibles 

 seemingly incapable of the part just played by them. 

 Of these fourteen segments the intermediary ones 

 are provided with stigmata. Its livery is yellowish- 

 white, with countless chalky white dots. 



We saw that the larva began on the stomach of 

 the second cricket, this being the most juicy and 

 fattest part. Like a child who first licks off the 

 jam on his bread, and then bites the slice with 

 contemptuous tooth, it goes straight to what is best, 

 the abdominal intestines, leaving the flesh, which 

 must be extracted from its horny sheath, until it 

 can be digested deliberately. But when first 

 hatched it is not thus dainty : it must take the 

 bread first and the jam later, and it has no choice 

 but to bite its first mouthful from the middle of the 

 victim's chest, exactly where its mother placed the 

 egg. It is rather tougher, but the spot is a secure one, 

 on account of the deep inertia into which three stabs 

 have thrown the thorax. Elsewhere, there would 

 be, generally, if not always, spasmodic convulsions 

 which would detach the feeble thing and expose it 

 to terrible risks amid a heap of victims whose hind 

 legs, toothed like a saw, might occasionally kick, and 

 whose jaws could still grip. Thus it is motives of 



