THE FLAX-SEED STATE. 
575 
tlie plant ; hut when two or three are fixed in this manner 
around tho stem, they weaken and impoverish the plant, 
and cause it to fall down, or to wither and die. They 
usually come to their full size in five or six weeks, and 
then measure about three twentieths of an inch in length. 
Their skin now gradually hardens, becomes brownish, and 
soon changes to a bright chestnut-color. This change usu- 
ally happens about the first of December. 
The insect, in this form, has been commonly likened to a 
flax-seed (Fig. 259, natural size and magnified, 
larva on tho left). Hence “ many observers 
speak of this as the flax-seed state.” Others 
regard it as the beginning of the pupa state, 
wherein the condition of the insect is analogous 
to the immature pupa (boule allonge e) of com- 
mon flies. Such indeed has been my own im- 
pression concerning it ; and even so it seems to 
have been regarded by Mr. Herrick, although he 
was well aware of the actual form of the insect included with- 
in this “leathery” outer skin of tho larva, and of all its subse- 
quent changes. While this change of the color and texture 
of the skin is going on, the body of the insect, as remarked 
by Mr. Herrick, “ gradually cleaves from the dried skin, and, 
in the course of two or three weeks, is wholly detached.” 
In a letter dated February 21, 1843, he alludes more 
explicitly to the condition of the insect, in these words: 
“In two or three weeks after this change of color, the ani- 
mal within becomes entirely detached from the old larva- 
skin, and lies a motionless grub.” Accordingly, when this 
dried skin or flax-seed case is opened, the insect will be 
found loose within it, and still retaining tho maggot form, 
as stated by Mr. Herrick, Mr. Worth,* and Professor 
* Mr. James Worth, writing on this insect in 1S20, remarked that “ ns soon as it 
changes to the flax-seed color, by rolling it lightly with the finger, the tegument 
can bo taken ofi’; the worm will then appear with a greenish stripe through it, 
which Is evidently the substance extracted from the plant." (American Farmer, 
Voi. n. p. jso.) 
