London Insects. 147 



had made up his mind where to begin, rapidly tearing 

 off the bark, cutting into the wood, and " daintily 

 picking the Grub out of its bed with the slender 

 finger and conveying the luscious morsel to his 

 mouth." A sketch of the hands of the Aye-Aye, 

 taken by permission from one of the pictures of the 

 living animals drawn by Mr. Wolf for the Royal 

 Zoological Society, is given as vignette at the end 

 of the chapter. One of the dainty dishes of the 

 Romans is said to have been made of wood-eating 

 Caterpillars. 



Though the Grubs in Kensington Gardens have 

 nothing to fear from Aye-Ayes or human epicures, 

 they have enemies at least as formidable in the very 

 next order of insects which we come to after leaving 

 the Moths and Butterflies. 



Of the Hymenoptera one of the most important 

 divisions consists of the " Ichneumons " and other 

 flies like them, which lay their eggs in the bodies of 

 living Caterpillars. 



More than one of the Ichneumon flies is armed 

 with a long, sharp, springy " ovi-positor," as it is 

 called, which it either actually bores into trees or 

 pokes through cracks till it finds the soft body of 

 an unsuspecting Caterpillar, into which an egg is 

 slipped, to hatch in good time and eat its unwilling 

 foster-mother. There are numberless varieties of the 

 kind, many of which are believed only to lay their 

 eggs in particular larvae. The poor old Daddy 

 Longlegs have the questionable honour of an Ich- 

 neumon Fly, which seems to confine its attention 

 mainly, if not entirely, to them. " It is impossible," 

 writes Mr. Wood in his little book on " Common 

 British Moths," " to detect a stung Caterpillar till it 

 has ceased feeding, and not always easy to detect it 



