the Wasp and Rhipiphorus paradoxus. 207 
clipping off the lids of the cells. On so opening them I usuall 
pulled out the larva inside ; and in many I found the Rhépipho- 
rus-larve in various stages, bigger or smaller than the wasp- 
grub, as the case might be; and the Rhipiphorus.is so firmly 
attached by its mouth to the wasp-grub, that both, as a matter 
of course, came away together as one body. In one cell, how- 
ever, it was not so. In it I saw what appeared a very minute 
Rhipiphorus-larva, in the usual position of these creatures 
(lying across the throat of the wasp-grub). On pulling out the 
wasp-grub, the Rhipiphorus-larva did not in this instance 
come with it; it stretched a little, as if there were two points 
of adhesion, one to the wall of the cell, the other to the wasp- 
grub; and as I withdrew the latter the adhesion to it gave 
way, and the Rhipiphorus remained adhering to the cell-wall 
close below its lip (see Plate XIV. fig. 1). It collapsed back 
upon it and assumed a somewhat irregular rounded form, and 
seemed attached to. the cell-wall by a broad pedicel (fig. 2). 
It strikes me that this may have been the Rhipiphorus in an 
intermediate state between the egg and the larva—still egg at 
the base, and, as such, adhering to. the place on, which it was 
laid, but struggling into life at the head; and possibly the 
mandibles. had already appeared and made some slight inci- 
sion in the hide of the big wasp-grub, although I could make 
out neither mandibles nor incision. In the wasp and in many 
other insects (as the flies for example), probably in all that. 
have flexible skins, the eggshell is not broken in hatching; 
but becomes the first skin of thelarva. The stretching of this: 
object and its adhesion to the grub is the only. ground I have 
for supposing it to be any thing but simply the egg; that 
adhesion and consequent stretching might have been d 
merely to the continuity of the two soft bodies touching each 
other. Now that they (both grub-cell and egg) have. been a 
fortnight in spirits, the egg is merely a little round white dot. 
about the size of a pin's head, still adhering to its place on the 
cell-wall. At first I thought I could trace. something like 
the lineaments of the larva through the. eggshell or skin ; but 
that was, perhaps, imagination. 1 T 
I am right in the. interpretation of this, the egg is laid, 
not on the body of the wasp-grub, but on the wall of the 
cell just within its lip. The usual position of an egg laid 
‘the wasp is shown in fig. 16. : 
How long it remains in the egg-form before attacking the 
wasp-grub, I do not know. The specimen above-mentioned 
must have been laid at least two days before it reached me. 
t cannot remain very long, however, before being. hatched ; 
for it is a very common. characteristic of the closed cells in 
