46 



Development and Metamorphosis 



active food-getting life of the adult or imaginal stage. Familiar examples 

 of this kind of metamorphosis, the real metamorphosis, are provided by 

 the life of the monarch butterfly, the honey-bee, and the blow-fly. The great 

 red-brown monarch lays its eggs on the leaves of a milkweed; from the eggs 

 hatch in four days the tiny tiger-caterpillars (larva;) (Fig. 75) with biting 

 mouth-parts, simple eyes, short antennae, and eight pairs of legs on its elon- 

 gate cylindrical wingless body. The caterpillars bite ofi and eat voraciously 

 bits of milkweed-leaf; they grow rapidly, moult four times, and at the end 

 of eleven days or longer hang themselves head downward from a stem or 



Fig. 78. — Brood-cells from honey-bee comb showing different stages in the metamor- 

 phosis of the honey-bee; worker brood at top and three queen-cells below; begin- 

 ning at right end of ui>per row of cells and going to left, note egg, young larva, old 

 larva, pupa, and adult ready to issue; of the large curving queen-ccUs, two are cut 

 open to show larva within, (.^fter Benton; natural size.) 



leaf and pupate, i.e., moult again, appearing now not as caterpillars, but as 

 the beautiful green chrysalids dotted with gold and black spots. The form- 

 ing antennse legs and wings of the adult show faintly through the pupal 

 cuticle, but motionless and mummy-like each chrysalid hangs for about 

 twelve days, when through a rent in the cuticle i.ssues the splendid butterfly 

 with its coiled-up sucking proboscis, its compound eyes, long antenna;, its 

 three pairs of slender legs (the foremost pair rudimentar)-), and its four great 

 red-brown wings. The queen honey-bee lays her eggs, one in each of the 

 scores of hexagonal cells of the brood-comb (Fig. 78). From tiie egg there 

 hatches in three days a tiny footless, helpless white grub, with biting mouth- 

 parts and a pair of tiny simple eyes. The nurses come and feed this larva 

 steadily for five days; then put a mass of food by it and "cap" the cell; the 

 larva has grown by this time so as nearly to fill the cell. It uses up the 

 stored food, and "changes" to the pui)a, with the incomplete lineaments 

 of the adult bee. It takes no more food, but lies like a sleeping prisoner 



