The Hunting Wasps 



folding and to the second wrapper. It forms 

 a cylindrical wallet, closed on every side and 

 too large for its contents, thus causing the 

 surface to wrinkle. 



Next comes an elastic sheath, distinctly 

 smaller than the wallet that contains it, almost 

 cylindrical, rounded at the upper end, towards 

 which the larva's head is turned, and finishing 

 in a blunt cone at the lower end. Its colour 

 is still light-red, save towards the cone at the 

 bottom, where the shade is darker. Its con- 

 sistency is pretty firm; nevertheless, it yields 

 to moderate squeezing, except in its conical 

 part, which resists the pressure of the fingers 

 and seems to contain a hard substance. On 

 opening this sheath, we see that it is formed 

 of two layers closely applied one to the other, 

 but easily separated. The outer layer is a 

 silk felt, exactly like that of the wallet which 

 comes before; the inner layer, the third layer 

 of the cocoon, is a sort of shellac, a shiny wash 

 of a dark violet-brown, brittle, very soft to 

 the touch and of a nature apparently quite 

 different from the rest of the cocoon. We 

 see, in fact, under the microscope that, instead 

 of being a felt of silky threads like the previ- 

 ous wrapper, it is a homogeneous coating of 

 a peculiar varnish, whose origin is rather 

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