'WEEKLY ENTOMOLOGIST. 
“ ENTOMA QmDQUID AGUNT NOSTRI EST FARRAGO LIBELLI.” 
No. .6— Yol. 2.] SATURDAY, AiARCH 21, 1863. [Pejce 2 d . 
LIFE HISTORIES. 
by Peter Ixchbald, Esq., 
3 another season for Entomolo- 
gical labour and research 
is fast approaching, we would press 
iupon our fellow labourers the vast 
i importance of studying the history of 
an insect, in reference to all the 
stages of its existence. Those who 
simply content themselves with the 
imago-state of being, to the neglect 
of the earlier and more important 
phazes of existence, remind us of the 
Conchologists of olden times, who 
stored their cabinets with pretty shells 
utterly regardless of the mollusks 
which had made them their homes, 
or the curious economy that they had 
displayed in their structure. Such 
men do really little for science how- 
ever vast their collections may be; 
We would rather make ourselves 
acquainted with the life histories of a 
"Score insects, — to which soever of 
the orders they belong, — the egg- 
state, the larva-state the pupa-state? 
the imago-state- the food that sustain- 
ed them in their earlier stages — the 
phazes of being through which they 
have passed than merely be owners of 
expensive cabinets with long series of 
insects, symmetrically arranged and 
showing at most the wondrous variety 
of Nature’s tinting, and her prodigali- 
ty in the creation of abnormal forms. 
Let us take for example the gall-gnat 
that is instrumental in forming those 
pretty artichoke bosses in the yew. 
Every Entomologist must have seen 
them in his walks. The Dipteron 
itself Cecidomyia has little to distin- 
guish it from the one that has caused 
the rose-tufts on the willows ; but 
when the winter home of the fly is 
examined and the economy of the 
larva attentively considered what an 
additional interest is given to the gall- 
gnat from the consideration of these 
prior conditions. Or let us borrow 
from another order of insects — the 
Hymeno-ptera and notice the operations 
of Crabro Lindenensis. We see the 
parent hornet hugging a luckless flesh- 
fly as big as herself to the bore that 
her strong mandibles have formed in 
some decaying tree ; into this bore it 
is thrust, the egg is laid in its body 
the entrance is then fastened up with 
the detritus of the wood, and the 
flesh fly doomed to serve as food for 
the larva that is to be hatched, — and 
when it is full-fed it will attach its 
pupa case to the thorax of the fly that 
