INSECT METAMORPHOSIS 



fly is a maggot (Fig. 182 D). The maggots of the house 

 fly inhabit manure piles; those of the blow fly live in dead 

 animals where they feed on the decaying flesh. 



We might go on and fill a whole chapter, or a whole book 

 for that matter, with descriptions of the forms that insects 

 go through in their metamorphoses, but since other writers 

 have demonstrated that this can be done and without ex- 



.jb.S. 



Fig. 130. The life of a cutworm 

 A, the parent moth. B, eggs laid by the moth on a blade of grass. C, a cut- 

 worm at its characteristic night work, eating off a young garden plant at the 

 root. D, other cutworms climbing the stalk of plants to feed on the leaves. 

 E, the cutworm hidden within the earth during the day 



hausting the subject, we shall rather turn our attention 

 here to what may be regarded as the deeper and more ab- 

 struse phases of insect metamorphosis. Where the tacts 

 themselves are highly interesting, the explanation of them 

 must be still more so. Explanations, however, are always 

 more difficult to present than the facts that are to be ex- 



