144 THE LIFE OF AN INSECT. 



their rate of devouring than with that of other 

 insects in this state. 



All this eating cannot, of course, be unattended 

 with a great increase in the size of the larva. In 

 some insects growth is prodigiously rapid. A na- 

 turalist, who closely investigated this subject in 

 the common blow-fly, which is so apt to deposit 

 its eggs upon meat in hot weather, found that 



Growth of Silk -w 



in the space of four-and-twenty hours, the larva? 

 hatched from these eggs had increased to from one 

 hundred and forty to two hundred times their ori- 

 ginal weight. The larva of the great goat moth, 

 we are told by another, grows, altogether, to 

 about seventy-two thousand times its weight ; but 

 it takes three years so to do. In thus growing, 



