NATURE'S REALM. 
empty, but the fron? door was very different ! 
Instead of a crack, a thread wide and half an 
inch long, in the upper part of the back (the 
narrow black line in the chrysalis shows the 
butterfly’s door), there was in the side a per- 
fectly round hole the size of a pea; and trying 
his new wings (four narrow, glassy, blue-black 
ones) was something more unlike the butterfly 
than was the circular door he came out of.un- 
like the narrow door of the Asterias. Looking 
something like a saw-fly, and more like a wasp, 
it was a large ichneumon fly. The parent ich- 
neumon, having stung the caterpillar and de- 
posited the eggs, the ichneumon was safe in 
his provided chrysalis home, when he woke up 
to a sense of his privileges, and not only ap- 
propriated the house of the Asterias, but liter- 
ally lived on the occupant, eating him up and 
then making his own way into the world, leav- 
ing the chrysalis entirely empty and quite 
whole, with the exception of the round door. 
His head and slender body, antenne and six 
feet, are all an ochre yellow. The eyes are 
large, jetty black and oval-shaped, and back of 
them, on the top of the head, are three round, 
black beads, in a triangular position. His 
body is joined to his head and shoulders by a 
pedicel, so long and slender that he is able to 
work from it like a pivot in all directions, giv- 
ing as fine specimens of gymnastic operations 
as one often sees. 
His veined, clear wings are exquisitely 
glossy, and he polishes their steel blue till it 
143 
burns like a mirror. He has the vanity of a 
Beau Brummel, judging by the great pains he 
hourly takes with his entire toilet. Grasping 
both his long, trembling antennz at once, and 
smoothing them out again as a philosopher 
would stroke his beard, nothing is left on one 
of their thirty-five segments large enough for a 
microscope to reveal. Then his wings and six 
legs go through the same operation, and he is 
ready for a fresh supply of sugared sweets. 
But alas! his mouth! If he had claim to 
beauty in every other particular, one good look 
at this remarkable feature in a mirror would 
secure his humility forever. An hour’s close 
study with the microscope reveals no trace ot 
beauty about it! The most curious transfor- 
mations do no good in redeeming its unmis- 
takable homeliness. There are three projec- 
tions from it, impossible to describe; two seem 
like short, curved legs, with which it clasps its 
throat, and the centre is a curved affair some- 
thing like the letter V. It is very much like 
the mouth of a wasp, but in such constant mo- 
tion that one cannot guess at its exact shape or 
manner of manipulation. 
It is well that it is so small that it does not 
detract from his looks except with the use of a 
microscope—and so long as he does not know 
it himself we will allow his vanity to be par- 
donable. 
One such parasite will, however, satisfy us, 
and we hope only the zarrow front door will 
open for the rest of the Asterias chrysalids. 
