London Insects. 149 



ordinary diseases to which insects, like all of us, are 

 liable, and is lucky enough to be overlooked by birds, 

 beasts* and other insects, it may, so far as we know, 

 be pretty sure in good time of beginning life again as 

 a Butterfly, or whatever else it may be intended to 

 become. 



But in other countries there is another danger 

 to be met. In the insect house in the Zoological 

 Gardens is a case containing what looks like stalks 

 of coarse, irregularly -grown grass, with heavy 

 clumped roots. They are specimens of the larvae 

 of the New Zealand Swift Moth the so-called 

 "vegetating caterpillar," which, as the note in the 

 case explains, is liable to the attacks of a fungus 

 (Spkczria Robertii) which attaches itself to it and 

 sucks out the juices till the substance of the larva 

 becomes changed to something very like pure 

 vegetable matter. In this state it is eaten as a 

 delicacy by the Maoris. Something of very much 

 the same kind is found also in Ceylon, where the 

 Grub of the Coffee-eating Cockchafer is attacked in 

 the same way by another fungus, which commonly 

 grows an inch or two above the ground and has a 

 yellowish tip. " The Grub," writes a planter who has 

 dug up and examined many of the poor creatures on 

 the lawn in front of his bungalow, " is to be found an 

 inch or two below the surface, always in the position 

 sketched,* the head upwards and body bent as if in 

 suffering." 



The cherry tree which Baron Munchausen saw 

 growing out of the stag's head is intelligible. The 

 Baron had himself, for want of shot, fired at it 

 with a charge of cherry stones a few years before 



* The sketch referred to is printed as a tail-piece to the 

 chapter on St. Kilda, 



