64 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



she bent her ovipositor, and plunged it into the egg. 

 She performed the same operation upon many other 

 eggs, which he carefully put under cover; and in about 

 three weeks had from them a brood of flies of the same 

 species with the one whose remarkable proceedings he 

 had watched.* 



A writer in the Magazine of Natural History (Jan. 

 1830), gives an account of a numerous brood of a 

 very minute species of ichneumon, supposed to be an 

 egg parasite (Platygaster ovulorum ? STEPHENS), 

 which was produced from the caterpillars of the large 

 white cabbage butterfly (Pontia Brassicce). Having 

 enclosed a number of these in a wire cage, five or six 

 of them soon left off feeding, and crawled about the 

 cage. * June 30,' he proceeds, c I found them rest- 

 ing on large clusters of minute cocoons of an ovate 

 form, the largest not exceeding two lines in length, and 

 about the thickness of a caraway-seed. Each was en- 

 veloped with a fine yellow silk, resembling that of the 

 common silkworm (Bombyx Mori). On these clus- 

 ters the caterpillars remained the whole day without 

 moving. Fresh leaves were given to the rest; but in 

 the course of the day they all left off feeding, crawled 

 about the cage, but underwent no other change. 

 Early next day, I found they had, with the exception 

 of two or three, all ejected the parasitical progeny they 

 had been impregnated with; and, like the preceding 

 caterpillars, continued resting on the clusters they 

 had formed: the remaining three followed the ex- 

 ample of the others; and the last operation of these 

 devoted caterpillars was to envelope each cluster in 

 a veil formed of the most delicate web.'")" It is 

 not a little interesting to remark, that this circum- 

 stance corroborates the statement before given from 



* Reaumur, Mem. vol. vi, p. 297. 

 t Loudon's Mag. Nat. Hist, iii, 51. 



