202 OUR INSECT FRIENDS AND FOES 



abandons the despoiled flower and seeks another 

 forthwith. Having found one, it circles nimbly 

 round it, making a sudden spring off and on, and 

 ends by settling on two of the thick reflexed 

 filaments, sprawling its legs out upon them. It 

 then seeks to reach a favourable spot on the 

 surface of the pistil with its ovipositor, and there 

 deposits its eggs. The ovipositor is composed 

 of four horny bristles, and is adapted to pierce 

 through the tissue of the pistil. After the eggs 

 are laid and the ovipositor is withdrawn, the 

 moth darts to the top of the infundibuli-form 

 stigma, unrolls its trunk-like palpi, and stuffs 

 the pollen into the stigmatic funnel, moving its 

 head too and fro repeatedly during the operation. 

 It is alleged that the same moth repeats the 

 processes of alternately laying eggs and stuffing 

 the stigma with pollen several times in the case 

 of the same flower. 



" Most of the eggs introduced into the pistil 

 are deposited in the vicinity of the ovules. 

 They are of oblong shape, narrow and trans- 

 parent, and increase rapidly in size, soon reveal- 

 ing in each a coiled-up embryo. On the fourth 

 or fifth day the larva is hatched, and at once 

 begins to devour the ovules in the cavity of the 

 ovary. Each grub requires from eighteen to 

 twenty ovules to nourish it during the period of 

 its development. When it is grown up, it bites 

 a hole in the still succulent wall of the ovary, 

 crawls out through the aperture, lets itself down 

 to the ground by a thread, burrows into the 

 earth and spins an oval cocoon underground, in 

 which it remains till the following summer. 





