108 PARASITES AND MONSTERS. 



withdrawn and leaves behind it, in the wound, a germ of 

 nascent torture a thousand times more dreadful than a drop 

 of deadly poison a tiny egg deposited within the warm orifice 

 pierced for its reception. In a few hours this egg becomes a 

 gnawing worm, which thrives and fattens on the vital juices, 

 leaving carefully untouched the vital organs of the hapless gor- 

 mandizer, thus compelled to foster it. Its growth completed, 

 the parasitic grub emerges, and then, in completion of its 

 murderous part, spins a silken thread, with which it proceeds 

 to bind the nearly exhausted body of its supporter (as Gulliver 

 by Lilliputian cords) to the surface of the oak-leaf. Thus 

 manacled, the shrunken remnant of the once plump crawler 

 exists yet a few miserable days, while the young Ichneumon, 

 having enclosed itself within a shroud of silk, undergoes its 

 transformations, and finally emerges into perfect life, a spark- 

 ling fly, like its parent, close beside the then dead body of the 

 creature by which it had been nourished to maturity. 



Now for the last and crowning horror of the oak tree, a 

 proceeding "foul and unnatural," which far "out-Herods" 

 the Herodian performances just noted. 



There is a certain black and yellow "Monster,"* also a 

 caterpillar feeder on the oak-leaf, which is often accustomed 

 to vary its vegetable diet by making a meal off a brother or 

 sister crawler. 



* " Monster Caterpillar," so called by collectors (ScopHosoma SatelUta). 



