REPORT OF THE SOCIETY 11 



food for young pheasants. There is a time in the Hfe of young pheasants before 

 their stomachs are able to digest grain during which they seem to require insect 

 food. Meal worms have been found excellent but they are too expensive to buy 

 and too slow to raise. Blowfly maggots have been found suitable food but the 

 rearing of them in carrion is a thouroughly obnoxious task, which no one likes 

 to perform. The question arose in my mind. Why not use the larvae of some 

 vegetable-feeding fly and avoid the stenches? It was Miss Laura Florence, 

 who in some initial experiments determined for me that the pulp-feeding larvae 

 of Muzcina seem most suitable, and it is these larvae that I have since been 

 raising. Mishaps and failures by the way, need not be recorded here. Suffice 

 it to say, that a very simple plan has been evolved, the essence of which is the 

 mechanical treatment of more or less succulent green herbs to make their 

 protoplasmic contents available. This is merely the application of the ancient 

 processes of cutting and grinding to disrupting the protective layers of cellulose 

 and lignin, thus exposing the stuffs on which the larvae may then feed. A great 

 variety of weeds have been used successfully; burdock, sweet clover, dandelion, 

 plantain, etc. These are prepared for use by being run though a green food 

 cutter, such as poultry-men use, and then thourgh a sausage mill and thus 

 reduced to a soft pulp. This pulp intermixed with a little yeast from an old 

 culture is spread out in pans, sprayed with a little cider vinegar to check the 

 growth of mould and to prevent that of yeasts, a little brown sugar is added 

 for bait, two days are allowed for fermentation, and then the pans are exposed 

 in a cage with the adult flies. These, if sexually nature, lay their eggs either 

 on the pulp, or if it be very moist on the sides of the pan just above its surface. 

 Within ten days the larvae are full grown. The pans are dumped out on the 

 ground in the yard and the young pheasants do the rest. 



Here is a phenomenally quick turnover of green plant stuff into flesh. 

 On such food carnivorous birds and fishes thrive, and I see no reason why 

 it may not be provided easily and cheaply in any desired quantity; but the 

 production of it is still a new venture, as my title implies, with many details 

 of the methods still to be worked out. 



Since so many unused and often noxious plants have been found suitable 

 sources of food for these larvae, and since they may be equally good food for 

 other birds, such as young turkej^s and for fishes, I anticipate that the results 

 of these experiments may find a wide application. May we not have tapped a 

 new source of food supply for human kind by this unexpected route and another 

 aid to the maintenance of our ever increasing population? 



[The Speaker then called attention to the simplicity of structure 

 of the Muscina larva and to the shifting of metamorphosis that make 

 possible its rapid growth, and then spoke further concerning insect lar- 

 vae in general as follows:] 



The insect larva is an unparalleled biological phenomenon. Oken called it 

 an embryo at large. And so it is; but it is far more than this. For instead of 



