EIGHTH DAY.] INSECT METAMORPHOSES. 207 



habits. You know the curious details with which we 

 have been furnished by natural historians of bees and 

 ants, which live in a kind of society. The ant flies, 

 of which, as I mentioned to you, imitations are some- 

 times used by fishermen, were originally maggots, 

 and became furnished with wings not, however, 

 passing through the aurelia state for this last trans- 

 formation. 



POIET. I beg your pardon, but, having lately 

 read an account of these animals in the very interest- 

 ing book, called " An Introduction to Entomology," 

 I think I can correct you in one particular, which is, 

 that the maggot of the ant does assume the form of a 

 chrysalis or pupa, before it becomes a winged animal. 



HAL. It is true, that the immediate transition of 

 the maggot is into a pupa, then into an ant, which is 

 furnished with a kind of case, from which the wings 

 emerge for their perfect transformation into the fly or 

 imago state. The males die soon after performing 

 the sexual function; the females, when impregnated, 

 lose their wings, and either voluntarily or by force 

 enter into society with neuter or working ants, for 

 the purpose of raising a new generation. 



POIET. You are perfectly right; and, though it 

 would be irrelevant to our present object, I could 

 almost wish, for the sake of amusing our friends, 

 that you would detail to us some other parts of the 



