88 THE INSECT WOULD. 



M6neville, in the "Revue Nouvelle" of the 15th July, 1847, shows 

 the dacus laying its egg on the olive, and the larvae that are 

 already hatched in another of the same fruit. The larvae which 

 succeed these eggs (Fig. 67) are whitish, soft, and without limbs. 

 They pass fifteen or sixteen days in boring a gallery in the pulp of 



the olive, at first vertically, until it 

 reaches the stone, then on one side, 

 and along the side of the stone. When 

 they have reached the term of their 

 development, they approach the sur- 

 face, enlarging the first channel and 

 leaving between it and the exterior air 

 only a thin pellicle, in the middle of 



Fig. 67. Larvae of Dacus oleae (magnified , . , , , , ,, 



and natural size). which may be perceived the first small 



opening by which the mother had introduced her egg in the 

 commencement. 



Fig. 68, copied from a drawing in the memoirs of M. Gue"rin- 

 M6iieville, shows the gallery bored round the olive by the cater- 

 pillar of the dacus. The larva thus prepares an easy issue for 

 the perfect insect. Its skin then contracts, its body diminishes in 

 length and is transformed into an oval cocoon, which soon gets 

 brown, and is the chrysalis of the insect. At the side of the head 

 t shows a curved line, a thin suture which marks a sort of cap or 

 door, which, at the time of its hatching, 

 the insect will be easily able to force open 

 with its head. The fly is hatched twelve 

 days after its metamorphosis from the larva 

 to the pupa. It has thus taken the dacus 

 twenty- seven to twenty- eight days to arrive 

 Fig. 68.-Gaiiery formed by at this state, from the time the egg was laid ; 

 besides which, this species, in the warm 



climates of Provence and Italy, can reproduce itself several times 

 from the beginning of July, the period at which the first flies 

 begin to lay, till the end of autumn. 



In order to save a considerable portion of the olive crop of these 

 countries, M. Guerin-Meneville has advised hastening the harvest 

 sufficiently for all the olives to be destroyed at a time when the 

 larvae of the last generation, which are to be preserved in the 



