344 



THE WORLD OF ANIMAL LIFE 



That little fly possesses an instrument at the end of her body 

 with which she immediately begins to pierce the caterpillar's 

 skin. Each time she does so she deposits an egg in her victim's 

 body, and as this operation is repeated fifty or sixty times in 

 the same caterpillar we can have full sympathy with all its 



expressed objections to 

 so awful a visitor. 



The caterpillar has 

 received its death-stroke. 

 For that little visitor is 

 the Ichneumon FI3', and 

 every time the little 

 black instrument was 

 poked into the flesh of 

 the caterpillar it left an 

 egg behind it which in a 

 few hours' time, with all 

 the other fifty or sixty 

 eggs, will hatch. Out 

 of each egg will come a 

 hungry little grub, and 

 those fifty or sixty grubs 

 will feed internally upon 

 the flesh of the cater- 

 pillar! 



This is their only diet 

 throughout their exist- 

 ence. Morning, noon, 

 and night those hungry little mouths gnaw away at the cater- 

 pillar's flesh. Fortunately the caterpillar seems to suffer no pain, 

 and to be unconscious that so many deadly foes are slowly 

 devouring it Even its appetite does not suffer, and it goes on 

 eating just as before, changing its skin at intervals, and appearing 

 to be in perfect health. 



At first the little grubs, led by a wonderful instinct, avoid the 

 vital organs of their victim, and feed only upon the fat, of which 

 a great deal is stored up within its body. When this is exhausted, 



Caterpillar devoured by the Larvae of Ichneumons, and 

 Caterpillar covered with their Cocoons 



