794 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
HIDQB. LARVA. THEIR SBRPRUIKQ VITALITT. 
attest that numerous larvae have been nourished therein, yet 
without finding one of these cast skins therein. We usually meet 
with but one, sometimes two, rarely so many as three or four of 
these cast skins in a single floret, although the diminutive kernel 
indicates that four times as many larvaa as this have nestled there. 
Again, when a larva first reaches maturity, with its skin still soft 
and pliant,,if a fall of rain occurs whereby it may at once descend 
to the ground, will it not do so, without tarrying an uncertain 
length of time for its skin to dry and separate ? I think it will, 
and that when it once reaches the moist ground its skin will not 
afterwards dry and harden to be cast off. Finally, when the 
grain ripens there are often multitudes of larvae in it which are 
not yet grown. But the kernels having become dry and hard, 
they can obtain no more sustenance from them and therefore can 
grow no larger. And these immature larvae never became cased 
on drying, as I have noticed in numerous instances. They dry 
without the ends of their bodies becoming in the least transparent. 
They shrink up and become shapeless and hard, and you think 
they are all dead ; but place them in a wet cloth, you are 
astonished to find what vitality these little creatures possess, 
and how they revive and crawl away, only a few of the minutest 
ones remaining and after a long time becoming mouldy, whereby 
you are assured they are really dead. You thus see that neither 
starvation nor drouth is able to kill any of these larvai except 
the mere infants and pigmies of their race. And upon observing 
the larvae which are crawling down the wet straw from the 
ripened grain, you notice numbers among them which are dwarfs, 
some of them but half the usual size. Have these ever been 
cased larvae ? Have they changed their skins ? I trow they have 
not. Yet they enter the earth, and the next Juno we see them 
again, as I think, in the numerous dwarf midges we meet with on 
the wheat ears, some of them being less than half the normal 
size of their species. 
To the question then, do these larvm of the midge moult, do 
they cast their skins ? I reply, they do and they do not. The 
subject reminds me of Shakespeare’s description of wine. It's 
an equivocator. And I have not been able to investigate it suffi¬ 
ciently to determine the exact circumstances under which this 
moulting does apd does not occur. Where the skin of a cased 
larva becomes fractured or torn, admitting the external air 
