78 INSECT BEHAVIOR 



ing in one of these trees. They were easily one hundred and twenty- 

 five feet from the ground, yet quite unconscious of the dizzy height, 

 they reached here and there for the fruit, seldom clinging to the 

 branches with other than the hind legs. They ate with great relish 

 and greed, plucking far more than they could possibly eat. Conse- 

 quently many nuts were dropped quite untouched, and wasted. 

 Curious as to the quality of the fruit, I picked one up and split it 

 apart. To my surprise it contained eleven light yellow maggots, that 

 writhed about actively and tried to escape from their late prison. 

 They had eaten the soft pulp entirely away, leaving only a mass of 

 brown excreta and the inner nut, which was free and rattled about 

 when I replaced the shell which had been cut away. Thus, by chance, 

 I discovered the subject of this chapter in its strange cradle among 

 the tree-tops, where it has doubtless fed in its larval state since the 

 first vermilion-nut blossomed in the branches of its parent This is 

 a new species of fly belonging to the family Trepetidae, and the genus 

 Spilographa. 



When and how the mature insect deposits her egg within the nut 

 is beyond me. It would be necessary to live in the loftiest branches 

 to ascertain such a fact. One glance at a vermilion-nut tree would 

 stand as evidence of its infeasibility. One thing we do know; the 

 insect is a fly, as shown by the larva, a typical fly maggot, with eleven 

 segments, counting the head. It tapers from a well-rounded segment 

 at the posterior end, almost to a point at the head, which is supplied 

 with two hooks turned downwards like the claws of a cat. It is trans- 

 parent yellowish white and through its entire body one may trace a 

 pair of respiratory tubes with one set of openings in the head and 

 the other in the last segment of the body. These orifices, two in front, 

 two behind, stamp the creature as a young or larval fly. 



The eggs are probably deposited when the fruit is still soft and 

 immature or perhaps the scent of the tree's blossoms beckons to the 



