604 



ARTICULATES. 



Gad-flies. The May-fly or Day-fly, (Ephemera,) commits its 

 eggs to the water, and dies in a few hours, though including its, 

 larva and pupa states, it had previously lived two or three 

 years. The Butterfly needs only a little honey ; the Fly daintily 

 . sips its food, while the larvae of both eat most voraciously. 



Some insects are able to endure abstinence from food for a 

 long time. The Ant-lion, Myrmeleon, (Gr. murmex, ant; leon, 

 lion,) can remain for six months, uninjured, without food, thought 

 daily devouring an insect of its own size when it can be obtained ; 

 Beetles have been known to live two or three years without food 

 of any kind. Most insects feed themselves, but the young of 

 those which live in societies, and continue longer than most oth-. 

 ers in the adult state, as the Bees, Wasps, Ants, &c., are fed by 

 the older ones, which also store up food for future use. 



Most insects are extremely prolific. They are, as we have 

 seen, produced from eggs laid by the female ; though there is 

 one remarkable exception to this rule in the Aphis or Plant-lice, 

 (order Hemiptera,) which increases by a process of gemmation 

 or budding, somewhat after the manner of the Polypi, females 

 being thrown off at once for several generations, of which each 

 has the power to multiply its kind in the same way. even to 

 the seventh or ninth generation ; when eggs are again laid, and 

 the gemmating or budding process is again renewed. Accord- 

 ing to calculations based upon observation, the whole brood in a. 

 season from a single Aphis, will amount to the immense number 

 of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000! but the insect is extremely fee- 

 ble; "the touch destroys it; the winds, rains, and cold, sweep 

 off its numbers by hundreds of thousands." (Emmons.) 



The Queen-Bee, Apis mettifica> (Lat. honey-bee,) lays fifty 

 thousand eggs; the female White- Ant, Termes bellicosa, has an 

 abdomen fifteen hundred or two thousand times as large as the 

 rest of the body, and lays eighty thousand eggs in twenty-four 

 hours, and forty or fifty millions in a year. 



Insects usually deposit their eggs where the young larvae may 

 find appropriate food. Thus, the Silk-worm places hers on the 

 leaves of the Mulberry, Morus multicaulis, (Lat. many-stalked 

 mulberry.) The Hessian-fly, Cecidomya destructor, deposits its 

 eggs upon the young leaf of 'the wheat, where it joins the stem 

 or straw (culm) near the earth ; while the Wheat-fly, C. tritici, 

 places hers in the wheat-head ; the Gad or Horse-Fly, Oestrus, 

 (Gr. oistros, a gad-fly,) equi, (Lat. of a horse,) deposits hers in 

 hundreds upon the hairs of the horse. Ichneumon-Flies, Ichneu- 

 monidce, deposit theirs in or upon the bodies of Caterpillars and 

 other larvae, by means of a sharp and strong abdominal tube or 



