AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 203 



number, till they are hatched. This takes place in a few days ; and after- 

 wards she carefully feeds them in the larva state, in which the brood keeps 

 together, whether eating or sleeping, in an oval mass, sitting upon them 

 with outstretched wings, shading them from the heat of the sun, and pro- 

 tecting them with admirable perseverance from the attacks of parasites and 

 other enemies, for a period of from four to six weeks, until her death. 1 



According to M. Schmidberger, the female of a small wood-boring beetle 

 (Trypodendron dispar Steph.) bores in young healthy apple-trees passages 

 of about an inch and a half in length, penetrating near to the centre, and 

 deposits at the end of them in a sort of chamber from seven to ten eggs, 

 the larvae from which when excluded arrange themselves in the passages 

 one after another, and there feed on a white powdery substance, which he 

 calls ambrosia, and supposes to be prepared by the female from the sap. 

 This female, he says, never quits the passages and chambers in which her 

 larvae reside, but remains with them two months or more, till they are 

 become perfect beetles, and he conceives is occupied partly in laying other 

 eggs, but partly also in preparing "ambrosia" for them and defending 

 them from their enemies. 2 These procedures are certainly very different 

 from those we should expect in an insect in this tribe ; yet as the facts are 

 stated so fully and circumstantially by a close observer, they deserve farther 

 investigation from entomologists who have an opportunity of studying the 

 economy of this species. 



We are indebted to De Geer for the history of a field-bug (Acanthosoma 

 grised), a species found in this country, which shows marks of affection for 

 her young, such as I trust will lead 'you, notwithstanding any repugnant 

 association that the name may call up, to search upon the birch tree, which 

 it inhabits, for so interesting an insect. The family of this field-bug con- 

 sists of thirty or forty young ones, which she conducts as a hen does her 

 chickens. She never leaves them ; and as soon as she begins to move, 

 all the little ones closely follow, and whenever she stops assemble in a 

 cluster round her. De Geer having had occasion to cut a branch of birch 

 peopled with one of those families, the mother showed every symptom of 

 excessive uneasiness. In other circumstances such an alarm would have 

 caused her immediate flight ; but now she never stirred from her young, 

 but kept beating her wings incessantly with a very rapid motion, evidently 

 for the purpose of protecting them from the apprehended danger. 3 As far 

 as our knowledge of the economy of this tribe of insects extends, there is 

 no other species that manifests a similar attachment to its progeny ; but 

 such may probably be discovered by future observers. It is De Geer also 

 that we have to thank for a series of interesting observations on the ma- 

 ternal affection exhibited by the common earwig. This curious insect, so 

 unjustly traduced by a vulgar prejudice, as if the Creator had willed that 

 the insect world should combine within itself examples of all that is most 



Trans. Ent. Soc. Land. i. 233. For a figure of Perga Lewisil see Mr. West- 

 wood's valuable and beautiful " Arcana Entomologica," ><o. 2. plate 7. fig. 1. 



2 Kollar's 7ns. inf. to Gardeners, &c. 254 262. There seems to be a considerable 

 resemblance between the " ambrosia " above mentioned and the globules of a kind 

 of "mucor, " found by Smeathman and Konig in the nurseries of the African and 

 East Indian Termite*, and still more the "gelatinous particles not unlike gum 

 arabic," which Latreille observed in the galleries of Termes lucifugus in the trunks 

 of pines and oaks. (See LETTER XVII. On Perfect Societies of Insects Whit9 

 Ants. 8 De Geer, iii. 262. 



