MARVELS OF METAMORPHOSIS 



A Scientific "G-man" Pursues Rare Trapdoor Spicier 



Parasites for Three Years Witli a Spade 



and a Candid Camera 



By George Elwood Jenks 



With Illustrations from Photographs by the Author 



w 



HO ever heard of worms chang- 

 ing into butterflies? Why, that 

 sounds lil^e witchcraft!" 



Thus reasoned the horrified city fathers 

 of a town in Chile, only a century ago, 

 when they discovered that a German scien- 

 tist in their community was raising caterpil- 

 lars which magically changed shape and 

 sprouted wings. According to Charles 

 Darwin, who relates the incident in his 

 diary of the voyage of H. M. S. Beagle, 

 the miracle-working biologist was actually 

 arrested and charged with heresy! 



Is it any wonder that provincial officials 

 of that day saw something supernatural in 

 the transformations conjured up by Na- 

 ture's witchcraft? Since then, the four 

 stages of insect life — egg, larva, pupa, and 

 adult — have become familiar to laymen, 

 and watching "caterpillars turn into butter- 

 flies" is a favorite schoolboy diversion. 



Yet, even today, scientists themselves are 

 still baffled by some of the deeper mysteries 

 of insect metamorphosis. 



THE JOY A MYSTERY HOLDS 



A mystery of any kind holds a strong 

 fascination for me. When the individual 

 portions of universal human curiosity were 

 handed out, I must have received an extra- 

 large slice, for I have found real joy only 

 in experimenting, investigating, and explor- 

 ing. That explains why I eventually found 

 myself back where I started in boyhood, 

 "watching caterpillars turn into butterflies." 

 Only in a figurative sense, however, for I 

 had found that far too much of the butter- 

 fly's inner development was hidden behind 

 caterpillar skins and chrysalids. 



The very fact that it was hidden ap- 

 pealed to my "Peeping Tom" complex. So 

 I passed up the disappointing butterflies, 

 and hoped some day to find an insect that 

 would not be so shy and secretive about its 

 private life and magic transformations. 



One insect trail led me on to another, out 

 into the adobe hills of southern Califor- 



nia, down through the tunnels of trapdoor 

 spiders, and into a dim and little-known 

 insect underworld. 



There I found strange creatures and 

 explored new trails as alluring to me as any 

 unmapped waterway ever traversed by 

 my canoe in a Canadian wilderness. And 

 there I struck the trail of a mysterious 

 parasite that promised to fulfill my dreams 

 of finding an insect nudist that would 

 reveal its larval and pupal forms, uncon- 

 cealed by opaque skins and pupal mummy 

 cases. 



THE BLACK WIDOW TRAIL 



Three black widow spiders were instru- 

 mental in starting me on the trail that led 

 to the insect underworld. We had moved 

 into a little cottage out near the South- 

 west Museum on the outskirts of Los 

 .'\ngeles, and it gave me a jolt when I dis- 

 covered these venomous spiders and their 

 families making themselves very much at 

 home in the new garage. Somehow I did 

 not quite like the idea of the black widows' 

 children growing up as playmates for our 

 two-year-old Danny.* 



I grabbed an old broom and started a 

 war of extermination, but could not resist 

 pausing to take a last look at the third 

 intended victim. Black as a coal, save for 

 the red hourglass mark, she was beautiful 

 in a slinky, sinister way. 



Here was mystery again. Scientists dis- 

 agreed about her, and no one seemed to 

 know the cause of her alarming increase 

 and spread during recent years. And there 

 was her dainty silken egg sac. What was 

 happening inside? Could that hidden life 

 be photographed? 



The old fever was upon me again — the 

 lure of the unknown — and, as usual, it hit 

 me hard. When I came back to earth, I 

 found that I had a growing colony of black 



* See "Afield with the Spiders," by Henry E, 

 Ewing, in the N.^tional Gr.OGR.APiric M.^c.iziNE, 

 .■\uKUst, 19,^.3, and "Potent Personalities — Wasps 

 and Hornets," by Austin H. Clark, July, 1937. 



807 



