FOOD OF INSECTS AND SPIDERS G5 



Government have had to spend £10,000 a year for some years 

 in making the roof safe. Many weevils destroy cereals or 

 rice. The larvae of other species of beetle devour stored 

 hams and bacon and lard. Others live on tobacco, and are so 

 varied in their tastes that they will feed on raisins, cayenne 

 pepper, dried fish, ginger, liqueurs and pyrethrum powder, 

 which is the basis of all insect-powders. The adult tobacco 

 beetle, which so often spoils cigars and pipe-tobacco, is about 

 l-16th inch in length, and it is curious to note that the size of 

 the adult is always increased when the larva has been deposited 

 in selected cigars of a very high quality. The female prefers 

 the milder cigar to those that are stronger, a "Claro" rather 

 than a " Colorado " and expensive Turkish tobacco rather than 

 the Virginian. Altogether a beetle of a refined and delicate taste! 



It should be noted here that in insects it is the larva who 

 does most of the eating and all the growing. Most insects 

 attain their largest size at the end of the larval period. They 

 shrink a little as a rule when they become pupae or chrysalides 

 and the adult insect weighs less than the last larval stage. 

 Those insects that live but for a few hours, such as the May- 

 flies (Ephemeridae), take no food during the adult stage. 

 They simply pair and the male dies ; the female lays her eggs 

 and then she promptly dies too. During the intermediate stage> 

 the pupa or chrysalis, no insect takes any food at all. Many 

 insects devour green leaves and are one of the gravest dangers 

 to crops and forest. Famine follows the locust, and of recent 

 years the larva of a small moth, Tortrix viridana, has been 

 destroying our oak-trees. Such leaf-eating insects derive their 

 bodily pigments directly from the leaves they eat. 



Spiders are in the main carnivorous. They take only liquid 

 food, for like the house-fly their mouth is minute. They suck 

 the fluids from captured insects or other spiders, etc. Although 

 the mother often exercises a certain maternal care and shows 

 an interest in her offspring, she is but a poor hel]Mnate, as 

 she frequently devours her husband as soon as they have 

 paired. Scorpions again are carnivorous, living on spiders and 

 insects which they seize Avith their nippers and sting to death 

 with the product of a poison-gland situated at the end of the 

 tail. Female scorpions also destroy their mates after pairing. 



SL 5 



