282 LACE- WING PUPA. 



her existence, and becomes from an active grub or larva (cor- 

 respondent to the caterpillar of Lepidopterce) an inanimate 

 pupa (the likeness of a chrysalis), she furnishes of course but 

 slender matter for the historian of insects. Yet, even in this, 

 her stage of passive transition, our " Lace- wing " in progress 

 affords us something worth observing. After being wearied 

 of aphis slaughter, whereon she has attained her full growth, 

 her last active operation is to enwrap her body in a silken 

 shroud or cocoon, spun previously, not after caterpillar usage 

 by an apparatus at the mouth, but by one provided for the 

 purpose at the taiL 



Within this woven wrapper is effected the usual secondary 

 change, and our grub or larva becomes a pupa. In this form, 

 or rather in her emergement thence a perfect fly, our lace- 

 wing offers another remarkable peculiarity ; or, perhaps we 

 should say more correctly, exemplifies, in a remarkable man- 

 ner, a circumstance more or less note-worthy with various in- 

 sect tribes. This is the extraordinary disproportion in size ob- 

 servable between the winged creature, or Imago, and the pupa 

 from whence it is developed. In the curious folding of their 

 members within the chrysalidan cover, and the no less curious 

 expansion of their wings after emergement, the generality of 

 moths and butterflies furnish a beautiful example of this com- 

 pressive and comprehensive work of nature ; but the same 

 operation assumes almost the air of what we call a miracle in our 

 elegant lace-wing fly, which, in one of its species,* exhibits a 



