AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 353 



is nearly two inches long a : and it is not much shorter 

 in the more minute /. Strobilellce, which lays its eggs in 

 larvae concealed in the interior of fir cones, which without 

 such an apparatus it would never be able to reach. 



The tail of the females of many moths whose eggs re- 

 quire to be protected from too severe a cold and too 

 strong a light, is furnished, evidently for application to 

 this very purpose, with a thick tuft of hair. But how 

 shall the moth detach this non-conducting material and 

 arrange it upon her eggs? Her ovipositor is provided at 

 the end with an instrument resembling a pair of pincers, 

 which for this purpose are as good as hands. With these, 

 having previously deposited her eggs upon a leaf, she 

 pulls off her tuft of hairs, with which she so closely enve- 

 lops them as effectually to preserve them of the required 

 temperature : and having performed this last duty to her 

 progeny she expires. 



The ovipositor of the Capricorn beetles {Cerambyx, L.), 

 an infinite host, is a flattened retractile tube, of a hard 

 substance, by means of which it can introduce its eggs 

 under the bark of timber, and so place them where its 

 progeny will find their appropriate food b . The auger 

 used by certain species of GEstrus, to enable them to 

 penetrate the hides of oxen or deer and form a nidus for 

 their eggs, has been before described . — But to enu- 

 merate all the varieties of these instruments would be 

 endless. 



The purpose which in the insects above mentioned is 

 answered by their anal apparatus, is fulfilled in the nu- 



a Plate XVI. Fig. 1. b See Kirby in Linn. Trans, v. 354. 



t. \2. f. 15. ° See above, 149. 



2 A 2 



