84 Mr. A. Murray on the Belations 



period, tlie form of the larva can Le distinguished, when viewed 

 as a transparent object. It is fixed, by the narrow end, in an 

 angle of the cell about a third of the way from its base. By- 

 and-by it looks as if it had a head, and by-and-by like a larva 

 holding on by the tail. How it comes out of the shell, or whe- 

 ther it ever comes out of the shell, I do not know ; most likely 

 Mr. Smith can say. It may be that the egg-shell is absorbed 

 and becomes practically the first skin of the larva. Looked at 

 later, or, I should rather say, in a further advanced specimen 

 (for that is the way in which the changes practically are ob- 

 served) , we find the larva nearer the base of the cell : it is 

 travelling to the bottom. It cannot fall out of the egg-shell 

 to reach it at one stroke ; for the cell is mouth down and the 

 bottom is at the top : it cannot fall up ; it therefore has to 

 work upwards. How it does so, is, I think, not known. It is 

 said by some to be by throwing itself into a loop and catching 

 hold of the wall of the cell v/ith its teeth, then releasing the 

 tail and throwing another loop, fastening its tail again as a 

 sucker and releasing its head, and so on, by a succession of slow 

 summersaults ; but this to me seems impossible. At the stage 

 in question it is a dumpy fat oval thing which, to all appearance, 

 could no more bend itself into a loop than a hogshead could. But 

 be that as it may, somehow or other the young larva manages 

 to wriggle itself (perhaps by slow action of its sucker tail) up 

 to the bottom of the cell. Now the first question I should like 

 to ask Mr. Smith is, whether this helpless larva is fed by the 

 parent wasps before it reaches its goal, the bottom of the cell, 

 or not. I see no reason why it should not, but almost a ne- 

 cessity that it should. The journey to it, especially if made 

 by the process of shifting its sucker tail without letting go its 

 hold, must not only be a slow one, but one involving con- 

 siderable exertion. We all know (that is, all entomologists 

 know) how soon a larva freshly excluded from the ei^'^ shrivels 

 up if its food is not at its mouth the moment it comes out, 

 and we are never tired of admiring the wonderful precautions 

 which the parent insect takes to ensure that its ofi'spring shall 

 find itself in the midst of plenty from the very first. I there- 

 fore believe that it is fed, and fed with soft food fitted for its 

 tender jaws. 



But hoAv about the young BMinjyJwnis-i^^xYS^ ? Is it fed too ? 

 And here it is scarcely a digression (certainly not an irrelevant 

 one) to ask what the larva is like. So far as I know, it has 

 never been properly described or figured. Candeze and Clia- 

 puis, in their works on the larvas of Coleoptera, give no de- 

 scription ; they refer to a notice of it by Hamdohr in Germar's 

 Mag. fiir Entom. I. (1813) p. 137, but whidi is without de- 



