LETTER XXX. 



STATES OF INSECTS. 



LARVA STATE. 



1 HE Larva state is that in which insects exist imme- 

 diately after their exclusion from the egg (or from the 

 mother in ovo-viviparous species), in which they usually 

 eat voraciously, change their skin several times, and have 

 the power of locomotion, but do not propagate. 



Almost all larvae, at their birth, are for a time in a very 

 feeble and languid state, the duration of which differs in 

 different species. In most it continues for a very short 

 time, a few minutes or perhaps hours, after which they 

 revive and betake hemselves to their appropriate food. 

 In others, as in the generality of spiders, this debility 

 lasts for seven or eight days, and in some species even a 

 month, during which the young ones remain inactive in 

 the egg-pouch a , and it is not till they have cast their first 

 skin that their active state of existence commences. 



All larvae may be divided into two great divisions : — 



I, Those which in general form more or less re- 



semble the perfect insect. 



II. Those which are wholly unlike the perfect in- 



sect. 



a De Geer vii. 197. 



