238 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



The female of Perga Leivisii (Westwood), one of the Tenihredinida;, 

 or Saw-flies, was observed by Mr. Lewis at Hobafton, Van Diemen's 

 Land, to sit upon the leaf into which she has inserted her eggs, about 

 eighty in number, till they are hatched. This takes place in a few days, 

 and afterwards she carefully feeds them in the larva state, in which the 

 brood keeps together, whether eating or sleeping in an oval mass, sitting 

 upon them with outstretched wings, shading them from the beat of the sun, 

 and protecting them with admirable perseverance from the attacks of 

 parasites and other enemies, for a period of from four to six weeks until 

 her death.^ 



According to M. Schmidborger, the female of a small woodboring beetle 

 (^Tr y podcndraji dispar Sieph.) bores in young healthy apple trees passages 

 of about an inch and a half in length, penetrating near to the centre, and 

 deposits at the end of them in a sort of chamber from seven to ten eggs, 

 the larvae from which when excluded arrange themselves in the passages 

 one after another, and there feed on a white powdery substance, which he 

 calls ambrosia, and supposes to be prepared by the female from the sap. 

 This female, he says, never quits the passages and chambers in which her 

 larvae reside, but remains with them two months or more, till they are 

 become perfect beetles, and he conceives is occupied partly in laying 

 other eggs, but partly also in preparing " ambrosia" for them and defend- 

 ing them from their enemies.^ These procedures are certainly very dif- 

 ferent from those we should expect in an insect in this tribe, yet as the 

 facts are stated so fully and circumstantially by a close observer, they 

 deserve farther investigation from entomologists who have an opportunity 

 of studying the economy of this species. 



We are indebted to De Geer for the history of a field-bug (Acanthosoma 

 grisea), a species found in this country, which shows marks of affection for 

 her young, such as I trust will lead you, notwithstanding any repugnant 

 association that the name may call up, to search upon the birch tree, which 

 it inhabits, for so interesting an insect. The family of this field-bug 

 consists of thirty or forty young ones, which she conducts as a hen does 

 her chickens. She never leaves them ; and as soon as she begins to 

 move, all the little ones closely follow, and whenever she stops assemble 

 in a cluster round her. De Geer having had occasion to cut a branch of 

 birch peopled with one of those families, the mother showed every symp- 

 tom of excessive uneasiness. In other circumstances such an alarm 

 would have caused her immediate flight ; but now she never stirred from 

 her young but kept beating her wings incessantly with a very rapid motion, 

 evidently for the purpose of protecting them from the apprehended 

 danger.^ — As far as our knowledge of the economy of this tribe of insects 

 extends, there is no other species that manifests a similar attachment to its 

 progeny ; but such may probably be discovered by future observers. 



It is De Geer also that we have to thank for a series of interesting 



» Trans. Ent. Soc. Load. i. 233. For a figure of Perga Lewisii, see Mr. Westwood's 

 valuable and beautiful " Arcana Entomologica," No. 2. plate 7. fig. I. 



* Kiillar's Ins. inj. to Gardeners, ice. 254— 2tJ2. There seems to be a considerable resem- 

 blance between the " ambrosia '' above mentioned and the globules of a kind of" mucor," 

 found by Smeaihman and Konig in the nurseries of the African and East Indian Termites. 

 and still more the " gelatinous particles not unlike gum arable," which Latreille observed 

 in the galleries of Tcrmes htcifus,vs in the trunks of pines and oaks. (See Letter XVII. 

 On Perfect Societies of Insects— TFAiie Ants.) ' De Geer, iii. 262. 



