FOOD OF INSECTS. 



327 



A very large proportion of species, however, are able to 

 subsist on several kinds of food. Amongst the carnivorous 

 tribes, it is indifferent to most of those which prey upon 

 putrid substances from what source they have been derived : 

 and the predaceous insects, such as the Lihellulina, Tele- 

 phorus, Empis, the Araneidce, &c., will attack most smaller 

 insects inferior to them in strength, not excepting in many 

 instances their own species. The wax-moth larva {Galleria 

 Cereana) will for want of wax eat paper, wafers, wool, &c. ' : 

 another Tinea described by Reaumur, and before adverted to, 

 attacks chocolate ^, which cannot have been its natural food, 

 even selecting that most highly perfumed ; and the Tinecs 

 which devour dressed wool, but happily for the farmer and 

 wool-stapler refuse it when unwashed, must have existed 

 when no manufactured wool was accessible. The vegetable 

 feeders are under greater restrictions, yet probably the majority 

 can subsist on different kinds of food. This is certainly true 

 of most lepidopterous larvje, several of which, as well as many 

 Coleoptera {Haltica oleracea, &c.), are polyphagous, eating 

 almost every plant. It is worthy of remark, however, that 

 when some of these have fed for a time on one plant they 

 will die rather than eat another, which would have been 

 perfectly acceptable to them if accustomed to it from the 

 first.^ Here too it must be borne in mind, that by far the 

 greater part of insects feed upon different substances in 

 their different states of existence, eating one kind of food in 

 the larva and another in the imago state. This is the case ^ 

 with the whole Order Lepidoptera, which in the former eat 

 plants chiefly, in the latter nothing but honey or the sweet 

 juices of fruit, which they have often been observed to 

 imbibe; and the same rule obtains also in regard to most 

 dipterous and hymenopterous insects. Those which eat one 

 kind of food in both states are chiefly of the remaining 

 orders. 



I have said that insects, like other animals, draw their sub- 

 sistence from the vegetable or animal kingdoms. But I ought 

 not to omit noticing that some authors have conceived that 



1 Reaum. iii. 257. 



^2 Ibid. iii. 277. 

 Y 4 



3 Ibid. ii. 324. 



