344 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR, THEIR YOUNG. 



impostors have pretended to carry within them — should 

 be found to feed upon the inside of a dog; devouring 

 only those parts not essential to life, while it cautiously 

 left uninjured the heart, arteries, lungs, and intestines, 

 — should we not regard such an instance as a perfect 

 prodigy, as an example of instinctive forbearance almost 

 miraculous? 



Some Ichneumons, instead of burying their eggs in 

 the body of the larvae that are to serve their young for 

 food, content themselves Avith gluing tliem to the skin 

 of their prey, which the young grubs pierce as soon as 

 hatched. Another tribe, whose activity and perseve- 

 rance are equally conspicuous, which includes the beau- 

 tiful genus Chrysis and many other hymenopterous in- 

 sects, imitating the insidious cuckoo, contrive to intro- 

 duce their eggs into the nests in which bees and Other 

 insects have deposited theirs. With this view they are 

 constantly on the watch, and, the moment the unsus- 

 pecting mother has quitted her cell for the purpose of 

 collecting a store of food or materials, glide into it and 

 leave an egg, the germe of a future assassin of the larva 

 that is to spring from that deposited by its side. 



The females of the insects of which we have been 

 speaking, in providing for their offspring, are saved the 

 trouble of furnishing them with any habitation. Either 

 they occupy tlrat of another insect, or find a convenient 

 abode within tlie body of that on which they feed. But 

 upon the maternal affection of another large hymeno- 

 pterous tribe, chiefly belonging to the Linnean genus 

 Sphex^ whose young in like manner feed on other in- 

 sects, is imposed the arduous task not merely of collect- 

 ing a supply of food, but of inclosing it along with their 



