ENTOMOLOGICAL. 87 



thus so cruelly used ? For the extraction of the small 

 golden coins, which, in their love of money, the captives 

 had swallowed, to secure their safety. 



Look at the hornet's tongue, and learn a lesson while 

 comparing it with that of the bee. How different its 

 structure ! how different the lives of the two insects, 

 though of the same family ! How like to human life ; 

 what singular difference may be observed in different 

 members of the same household ! How active, busy, and 

 thrifty one ! how sweet the temper_of another ! but, alas, 

 how waspish a third ! 



Here is a wasp-fly, so called from its striking outward 

 resemblance to that insect. Look at its remarkable tongue, 

 exceeding in beauty even the tongue of the house-fly. 

 Now observe those sharp lancets with which the female 

 deposits her eggs, after the manner of an ichneumon, in 

 the bodies of its prey. Its number of lenses in its eyes, 

 too ! Only think of these all being acquired by a grub, 

 which, in one family of the forty genera and upwards to 

 which this creature belongs, the Syrphidde, lives in a 

 state of water and mud while in the first stage of its 

 threefold life, it is provided with a long slender tail, 

 through the extremity of which it respires, something 

 like the larva of the gnat. 



The family to which this insect belongs, like many 

 parasitical creatures has for its life-work the destruction of 

 other tribes of insects. And I was much amused and in- 

 structed, in a recent visit to a scientific friend in Gloucester- 

 shire, while watching the habits of another group, the 

 wood-wasps in his garden. 



Wishing to afford every accommodation to these insects 

 who fed upon the caterpillars which destroyed his plants, 

 and observing their liking for open crevices in the bark 

 of trees, or any quiet corner where they might construct 



