90 Mr. A. ]\Iurray on the Relations 



the cell, exactly as the wasps, and fitting it as closely. This 

 argument alone seems to me fatal to the hypothesis that the 

 Rhipijihorus-Xixxwix limits itself to one victim. 



The alternative hypothesis, by which it is supposed to feed 

 on many, which I shall now consider, will be found to be 

 no sounder. Supposing that the footless parasite larva roams 

 about, emptying cell after cell, and clearing off wasp-grub 

 after wasp-grub, and developing and increasing in the normal 

 way at the expense of many, until the time approaches when 

 it is to take its last meal and pass into the pupa state, it must 

 by that time have attained considerable dimensions. A full- 

 grown wasp-grub might indeed find room in its cell for a tiny 

 iihij)q)horus-gvuh fresh out of the egg ; but one about to pass 

 into the pupa state, and nearly as big as itself, is another thing 

 altogether. But might it not begin upon it with half or the 

 whole of its body out of its victim's cell ? No ; because the 

 cell has, by Mr. Smith's hypothesis, to be spun up by its 

 victim ; and it could not do this if the way were thus stopped, 

 and, besides, it must not be so seriously injured or encroached 

 on as to prevent its doing this. There is plainly no room to 

 hold both. Two quarts of beer are not to be got into one 

 quart bottle by any process hitherto found out. But Mr. Smith 

 may abandon his lid-theory. He may admit the lid to be 

 spun by the Bhijnj^horus. But even then he has something 

 else to get over. How is he to get the BJripipJwrus, which 

 has entered the cell head foremost, turned round so as to have 

 its head to the mouth of the cell ? The creature, according to 

 this theory, has the instinct of going head forward into the 

 cells all the rest of its life. He must devise a new instinct for 

 it to make it back out of the cell whose tenant it has eaten, 

 and go on tail foremost into an empty cell when the proper 

 time for it to back in comes. But if Mr. Smith admits all 

 this — admits that the egg of the Eh'jripkorus and of the wasp 

 are the same and similarly placed, that the young larva? of both 

 are fed at first by the wasps, and that at last the mature larva? 

 of both spin the lids to their cells themselves — I think he must 

 also admit that the whole of the abstract grounds on which 

 the BhipipJwrus might be expected to have a different economy 

 from that of the wasp is swept away. If it is admitted that 

 it and the wasp do all the things that it seems unlikely they 

 should do, there ceases to be any reason for denying that their 

 economy is alike out and out, and that the same system of 

 feeding by the wasjjs with which they commenced is con- 

 tinued to the end. 



I shall now say a word or two as to Mr. Stone's observa- 

 tions : and here I may premise that, as will be evident to any 



