400 FOOD OF INSECTS. 



summer not exceeding- at the very utmost six weeks. 

 But one% which I put under a glass on the 2d of June 

 1811, when about half grown, and, after supjolying it 

 with Aphides once or twice, by accident forgot, I found 

 to my great astonishment alive three montlis after ; and 

 it actually lived until the June following without a 

 particle of food. It had therefore existed in the larva 

 state more than eight times as long as it would have 

 lived in all its states, if it had regularly undergone its 

 metamorphoses — which is as extraordinary a prolon- 

 gation of life as if a man were to live 560 years. It is 

 true that its existence was not worth having even to 

 the larva of a fly. For the last eight months it re- 

 mained without motion, attached by its posterior pair 

 of tubercles to the paper on which it was placed, mani- 

 festing no other symptoms of life than by moving the 

 fore part of the body Avhen touched, and replacing it- 

 self on its belly if turned upon its back. But this was 

 quite enough to prove it still alive. — I can attribute 

 this singular result to no other circumstance than its 

 having been deprived of a sufficient quantity of food to 

 bring it into the pupa state, though provided with 

 enough for the attainment of nearly its full growth as 

 larva. Possibly the same remote cause might act in 



"^ Not having ever met with another specimen, I am unable to say of 

 ■\vhaf precise ?pecies of aphidivoroiis ily it is the larva, nor can I tind a 

 figure of it, though it approaches near to one given by De Geer (vi. t. 7. 

 /. I-3.). Its shape is oblong-oval, length about four lines, and colour 

 pale red speckled with black. Each of the sevenoreight segments which 

 compose the body projects on each side into three serrated flat aculei or 

 teeth; three or four similar but smaller aculei arm the bead; and two, 

 much larger than the rest, the anus, one on each side of the usual bifid pro- 

 tuberance which bears the respiratory plates. A bifid tubercular ele- 

 vation is also' placed in the middle of the back of each segment. 



