356 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



the different species of Ichneumon are provided, is not 

 less nicely adapted to its various purposes. In those 

 which lay their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars that 

 feed, exposed on the leaves of plants it is short, often in 

 very large species not the eighth of an inch long: having 

 free access to their victims, a longer sting would have 

 been useless. But a considerable number oviposit in 

 larvas which lie concealed where so short an instrument 

 could not possibly approach them. In these, therefore, 

 the sting is proportionably elongated, so much so that in 

 some small species it is three or four times the length of 

 the body. Thus in Pimpla Manifestator, whose economy 

 has been so pleasingly illustrated by Mr. Marsham a , and 

 which attacks the larva of a wild bee (Chelostoma* max- 

 ittosa) lying at the bottom of deep holes in. old wood, the 

 sting is nearly two inches long c : and it is not much 

 shorter in the more minute /. Strobilella L., which lays 

 its eggs in larvae concealed in the interior of fir cones, 

 which without such an apparatus it would never be able 

 to reach. 



The tail of the females of many moths whose eggs re- 

 quire to be protected from too severe a cold and too 

 strong a light, is furnished, evidently for application to 

 this very purpose, with a thick tuft of hair. But how 

 shall the moth detach this non-conducting material and 

 arrange it upon her eggs ? Her ovipositor is provided at 

 the end with an instrument resembling a pair of pincers, 

 which for this purpose are as good as hands. With these, 

 having previously deposited her eggs upon a leaf, she 

 pulls off her tuft of hairs, with which she so closely en- 



* Linn. Trans, iii. 23. b Apis**, c, 2. y. K. 



' PLATE XVI. Fi. 1. 



