88 THE INSECT WORLD. 
Méneville, in the “Revue Nouvelle” of the 15th July, 1847, shows 
the Dacus laying its egg on the olive, and the larve that are 
already hatched in another of the same fruit. The larvee which 
succeed these eggs (Fig. 67) are whitish, soft, and without limbs. 
They pass fifteen or sixteen days in boring a gallery in the pulp of 
the olive, at first vertically, until they 
reach the stone, then on one side, 
and along the side of the stone. When 
they have reached the term of their 
development, they approach the sur- 
face, enlarging the first channel and 
leaving between it and the exterior air 
only a thin pellicle, in the middle of 
Ct Wie ana ae Cena awitickl may be perceived the first small 
opening by which the mother had imtroduced her egg in the 
commencement. 
Fig. 68, copied from a drawing in the memoirs of M. Guérin- 
Méneville, shows the gallery bored round the olive by the 
larva of the Dacus. The larva thus prepares an easy issue for 
the perfect insect. Its skin then contracts, its body diminishes in 
length and is transformed into an oval cocoon, which soon gets 
brown, and is the chrysalis of the insect. At the side of the head 
it shows a curved line, a thin suture which marks a sort of cap or 
door, which, at the time of its hatching, 
the insect will be easily able to force open 
with its head. The fly is hatched twelve 
days after its metamorphosis from the larva 
to the pupa. It has thus taken the Dacus 
twenty-seven to twenty-eight days to arrive 
Fig. 68.—Gallery formed by at this state, from the time the egg was laid ; 
larva of Dacus oleze. ° 6 : : : 
besides which, this species, in the warm 
climates of Provence and Italy, can reproduce itself several times 
from the beginning of July, the period at which the first flies 
begin to lay, till the end of autumn. 
In order to save a considerable portion of the olive crop of these 
countries, M. Guérin-Méneville has advised hastening the harvest 
sufficiently for all the olives to be pressed at a time when the 
larvae of the last generation, which would be preserved in the 


