302 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



she carefully feeds them in the larva state, in which the 

 brood keeps together, whether eating or sleeping in an oval 

 mass, sitting upon them with outstretched wings, shading 

 them from the heat of the sun, and protecting them with ad- 

 mirable perseverance from the attacks of parasites and other 

 enemies, for a period of from four to six weeks until her 

 death. ^ 



According to M. Schmidberger, the female of a small wood- 

 boring beetle ( Trypodendron dispar Steph.) bores in young 

 healthy apple trees passages of about an inch and a half in 

 length, penetrating near to the centre, and deposits at the end 

 of them in a sort of chamber from seven to ten eggs, the 

 larvse from which when excluded arrange themselves in the 

 passages one after another, and there feed on a white powdery 

 substance, which he calls ambrosia, and supposes to be pre- 

 pared by the female from the sap. This female, he says, never 

 quits the passages and chambers in which her larv« reside, but 

 remains with them two months or more, till they are become 

 perfect beetles, and he conceives is occupied partly in laying 

 other eggs, but partly also in preparing " ambrosia " for them 

 and defending them from their enemies.^ These procedures 

 are certainly very different from those we should expect in 

 an insect in this tribe, yet as the facts are stated so fully and 

 circumstantially by a close observer, they deserve farther 

 investigation from entomologists who have an opportunity of 

 studying the economy of this species. 



We are indebted to De Geer for the history of a field-bug 

 (^Acanthosoma grisea), a species found in this country, which 

 shows marks of affection for her young, such as I trust will 

 lead you, notwithstanding any repugnant association that the 

 name may call up, to search upon the birch tree, which it in- 



1 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 233. For a figure of Perga Lewisii, see Mr. 

 Westwood's valuable and beautiful " Arcana Entomologica," No. 2. plate 7. 



2 Kollar's Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. 254 — 262. There seems to be a con- 

 siderable resemblance between the " ambrosia " above mentioned and the glo- 

 bules of a kind of " mucor," found by Smeathman and Konig in tlie nurseries 

 of the African and East Indian Termites, and still more the " gelatinous par- 

 ticles not unlike gum arable," which Latreille observed in the galleries of Termes 

 lucifugus in the trunks of pines and oaks. (See Lettkr XVII. On Perfect 

 Societies of Insects — White Ants. ) 



