4 6 
Development and Metamorphosis 
active food-getting life of the adult or imaginal stage. Familiar examples 
of this kind of metamorphosis, the real metamorphosis, are provided by 
the life of the monarch butterfly, the honey-bee, and the blow-fly. The great 
red-brown monarch lays its eggs on the leaves of a milkweed; from the eggs 
hatch in four days the tiny tiger-caterpillars (larvae) (Fig. 75) with biting 
mouth-parts, simple eyes, short antennae, and eight pairs of legs on its elon¬ 
gate cylindrical wingless body. The caterpillars bite off and eat voraciously 
bits of milkweed-leaf; they grow rapidly, moult four times, and at the end 
of eleven days or longer hang themselves head downward from a stem or 
Fig. 78.—Brood-cells from honey-bee comb showing different stages in the metamor¬ 
phosis of the honey-bee; worker brood at top and three queen-cells below; begin¬ 
ning at right end of upper row of cells and going to left, note egg, young larva, old 
larva, pupa, and adult ready to issue; of the large curving queen-cells, two are cut 
open to show larva within. (After Benton; natural size.) 
leaf and pupate, i.e., moult again, appearing now not as caterpillars, but as 
the beautiful green chrysalids dotted with gold and black spots. The form¬ 
ing antennal legs and wings of the adult show faintly through the pupal 
cuticle, but motionless and mummy-like each chrysalid hangs for about 
twelve days, when through a rent in the cuticle issues the splendid butterfly 
with its coiled-up sucking proboscis, its compound eyes, long antennae, its 
three pairs of slender legs (the foremost pair rudimentary), and its four great 
red-brown wings. The queen honey-bee lays her eggs, one in each of the 
scores of hexagonal cells of the brood-comb (Fig. 78). From the egg there 
hatches in three days a tiny footless, helpless white grub, with biting mouth- 
parts and a pair of tiny simple eyes. The nurses come and feed this larva 
steadily for five days; then put a mass of food by it and “cap” the cell; the 
larva has grown by this time so as nearly to fill the cell. It uses up the 
stored food, and “changes” to the pupa, with the incomplete lineaments 
of the adult bee. It takes no more food, but lies like a sleeping prisoner 
