125 
Larva of the Hyrnenoptera. 
The evident insufficiency of some of these figures, is however to 
be regretted. In the figures of the larvae of Formica and Apis, we 
however find the body represented as composed of fourteen seg- 
ments, although the position of the spiracles is not noticed. The 
chief object, however, of Ratzeburg’s paper, is to point out the 
distribution of the segments of the body in the larva, with refer- 
ence to those of the imago. According to this author, the two 
first segments become the head of the imago; the third, fourth 
and fifth, the thorax; the sixth, the peduncle; and the seventh 
and following, the abdomen. The arguments upon which this 
view is supported, are founded chiefly upon the examination of 
the larva of the Formica , immediately preceding its assuming the 
pupa state, at which period it is evident that the external covering 
of the larva must, from its membranous texture, have conformed 
to the altered state of the already formed pupa beneath this en- 
velop. Now the head of the pupa and of the imago is larger than 
that of the larva, consequently it must, at this period of the in- 
sect’s existence, occupy not only the head of the larva skin, but 
also a portion of the next segment, hence we gain an idea of the 
reason which induced Dr. Ratzeburg to account the head of the 
imago as corresponding with the first two segments of the body 
of the larva. And I may here observe, upon the incorrect ideas 
which might be gained upon this part of the subject from the 
figures of this author, that his fig. 9 a represents the first segment 
of the larva, as occupied by the extremity of the antennas, but in 
fig. 12 (being at a subsequent stage) there is nothing in the figure 
to show, which however is evidently the case, that the first seg- 
ment of the larva is now entirely empty, the head of the pupa 
occupying the second segment of the larva. 
If therefore we apply the principles, admitted to exist in other 
groups of insects, to these apod larvae, we shall find that as the 
head of the imago is at this period of existence so far pushed out 
of its place as to occupy the first thoracic segment of the larva, it 
will necessarily follow that the other true thoracic segments of the 
imago will also be pushed one segment further backwards, with 
l-eference to those of the larva, and hence that the sixth, instead 
of the fifth segment of the larva, should cover the pedicle of the 
abdomen of the imago, and consequently (the pedicle being proved, 
by the gradual modification of form which it undergoes in differ- 
ent groups, to be a portion of the abdomen), that the fifth segment 
of the larva, as well as the following, should be abdominal. 
It may be said that this mode of explanation cannot be correct, 
because the anterior segments being pushed backwards, it would 
