Packard.] 
INSECTS OF THE GARDEN. 
17 
contents of another egg! We have had the pleasure of 
watching the labors, late in autumn, of this little insect, 
whose length measures not over three hundredths of an inch, 
as it was busily engaged upon a bunch of eggs under our 
object glass, with a restless anxiety to rid itself of its burden 
of infinitesimal eggs by pushing them through the walls of 
those upon which it stood. Each egg developing perhaps 
simultaneous^, we can imagine the race and struggle for ex¬ 
istence in that tiny enclosure. The germ of the larger worm 
rapidly collects and arranges the elements of its own form, 
but it is in vain; for the smaller being of a more rapid 
growth is stealthily and unawares a's constantly pulling 
Fig. 6. 
Ant-lion. 
down that structure of cells and tissues. The race is not 
always to the strong. 
It .often happens that several species of these parasites 
feed upon a single kind of caterpillar. Thus upon the army 
worm six species of ichneumons are known to exist, and a 
Tachina fly is extremely destructive to it. Baron Humboldt 
tells us in the “Views of Nature'’ that “Bombyx Pini, the 
Pine Spinner, the most destructive of all the forest insects 
in Europe, is infested, according to Ratzeburg, by no less 
than thirty-five species of parasitical Ichneumonidm.” 
We have incidentally alluded to the agency of carnivorous 
insects in diminishing the numbers of vegetable feeders. 
The appellation of ant-lions (Fig. 6, ant-lion in its hole; 
17 
