AFFECTION OP INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 355 



which the different species of Ichneumon are provided, 

 is not less nicely adapted to its various purposes. In 

 those which lay their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars 

 that feed exposed on the leaves of plants it is short, 

 often in very large species not the eighth of an inch 

 long: having free access to their victims, a longer 

 sting would have been useless. But a considerable 

 number oviposit in larvae which lie concealed where so 

 short an instrument could not possibly approach them. 

 In these, therefore, the sting is proportionably elon- 

 gated, so much so that in some small species it is three 

 or four times the length of the body. Thus in Ich- 

 neumon manijestator^ whose economy has been so pleas- 

 ingly illustrated by Mr. Marsham% and which attacks 

 the lar^^^ of a wild bee {Apis maxillosa) lying at the 

 bottom of deep holes in old wood, the sting is nearly 

 two inches long^ : and it is not much shorter in the morfe 

 minute /. Strobilellce, which lays its eggs in larvae con- 

 cealed in the interior of fir cones, which without such 

 an apparatus it would never be able to reach. 



The tail of the females of many moths whose eggs 

 require to be protected from too severe a cold and too 

 strong a light, is furnished, evidently for application to 

 this very purpose, with a thick tuft of hair. But how 

 shall the moth detach this non-conducting material and 

 arrange it upon her eggs ? Her ovipositor is provided 

 at the end with an instrument resembling apair of pin- 

 cers, which for this purpose are as good as hands. With 

 these, having previously deposited her eggs upon a leaf, 

 she pulls off her tuft of hairs, with which she so closely 

 envelops them as effectually to preserve them of the re- 



» Linn. Trans, iii. 23. " Plate XVI. Fig. 1. 



•2 A 2 



