LACE-WING LARVA. 281 



Looking now upon the lace-wing in its earliest shape of 

 animation, that of larva a flat, wingless, six-legged crawler, 

 wanting only size to make it frightful as well as hideous we 

 exclaim, " Can it be possible that an object so unsightly can 

 contain within it the germs of grace and beauty?" Even so; 

 and here, when without disguise "fierce" but not yet "fair " 

 we behold the wolf of aphides playing havoc amongst these 

 flocks of foliage, which, with more than lamb-like passiveness, 

 permit themselves to be individually picked out and slaugh- 

 tered by their terrible but apparently undreaded enemy, to 

 her their green pellucid bodies, filled with saccharine juice, 

 are so many honey-pots, which she knows well the trick of 

 emptying (at the rate of three in half a minute) by means of 

 her imperforate as well as pointed jaws. When thus reduced 

 to skins, the spoils of victim aphides are frequently observed 

 so heaped up around their destroyer, as to seem purposely 

 collected to serve it for a cover a proceeding which Kirby 

 has illustrated by comparing it to that of Hercules in clothing 

 himself with the skin of the Nemean lion. That the skins of 

 aphides are really employed by the grub of the lace- wing as 

 a covering, is indeed a fact sufficiently established by an ex- 

 periment of Eeaumur, who, on putting one of these creatures 

 under a glass case with a silken cocoon and raspings of paper, 

 found it convert both materials successively into similar 

 cloaks of concealment. 



"When our wolf of aphis flocks assumes the second form of 



