THE NATURAL ENEMIES. 
101 
it flies. Fortius reason it often becomes necessary for the wasp to 
carry the Cicada several times up into near-by trees, making repeated 
short flights before it reaches its burrow. 
The latter is excavated with great activity by the wasp, the drier 
and more elevated situations being usually chosen. The barrow ranges 
from 18 inches to 2 or 3 feet in length and has three or four or more 
branches of from 6 inches to a foot in length, each terminating in a little 
oval chamber. Within each of these chambers is stored a Cicada to 
which a single wasp egg is attached in such manner as to be covered 
and protected by one of the middle legs of the Cicada. 
The parasitic larva on hatching merely protrudes its head and makes 
an opening into the body of its host at some suture where entrance is 
easy, and slowly feeds on the soft, juicy interior. The larva remains 
outside of the Cicada throughout its life, but by means of its very 
extensile anterior segments, or neck, thrusts its small head throughout 
the interior of the Cicada and gradually ex- 
hausts the soft parts until the Cicada becomes 
a mere broken shell. The wasp larva increases 
in size very rapidly, ultimately attaining a length 
of li to 2 inches. It is then nearly white in 
color, with the head and month parts remarka- 
bly well developed and the anterior segments 
narrowed and capable of very great extension. 
The whole transformation from the egg to the 
full-grown larva is comprised in a very brief 
period, the egg hatching after two or three 
days and the larval life not much exceeding a 
week. 
When fully grown the larva constructs a 
cocoon in a very peculiar manner. First a cylin- 
der, open at both ends, is formed of earth with 
enough silk incorporated to form a rather dense and tough pod. When 
the cocoon is nearly completed the ends are capped, and the larva 
remains unchanged over winter and tranforms to a pupa in the spring 
or early summer shortly before the appearance of the mature inse< i. 
About the center of the cocoon are a number of very curious structures 
which may serve as breathing pores until the larva lias become accus- 
tomed to its new conditions, since they are ultimately sealed over, as 
represented in the illustration (fig. 49, b). 
Most of the fossorial wasps have habits very similar to this species, 
but many of the other genera, provision their nests with the larva 1 of 
Lepidoptera or with Orthoptera or sometimes with the larger spiders. 
MITK PARASITES or THE EGGS. 
& 
Fig. 49. — a, cocoon of M ■ _ - 
tizus, natural size: b. en- 
larged section of pore (alter 
Riley). 
Of the mites found either preying on the eggs of the Cicada or , 
ciated with them in such manner as to suggest a predaceous habit. 
