The Life of an Insect

, nor to experience either the pleasures or the cares of parents surrounded by their families. Their anxieties c

f self-devotion on the part of a poor spider in defence of her eggs. Let us now turn to some examples of the love of an insect mother for her young larva. If the reader will carefully search the twigs and leaves of the birch-tree in the month of July he may possibly succeed in finding the little insect, the field-bug, of which mention is about being made, and witness for himself the

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her, and stopped whenever the mother halted. She used to take them, as it were, for a walk from twig to twig, or from one leaf to another, parading up and down the branches of the tree, and she conducted them wherever she pleased, just as a hen does her chickens. It frequently afforded me great pleasure to observe their movements. One day I cut a young branch of t

e whenever he falls in with one of his children to seize him and eat him up! If the mother spies him at this horrible feast she immediately attacks him in the manner described; and does her utmost to deter him from his cannibal propensities

them, and they frequently ran and crouched under her, just as chickens under the wing of a hen. I took them up and placed them under a sand-glass, under which I had put a little fresh earth. They did not bore into the earth; and it was most curious to see them running for shelter under the moth

t her assistance in extricating her young from it was necessary. But this is not altogether correct, as they are able to make their way out by themselves in due time. When the young larv? have come forth from the shell they run towards the mother, and climb upon her body; some get on her head, some on her back, and some on her limbs. In this manner she carries them about, and is s

ay by their nurses, who take care to masticate the food for them, and thus prepare it for their tender mouths. But the most strange part is their regularly being taken out for the benefit of the air and warmth. Some of the ants at the top of the nest watch for the first beams of the welcome sun, and, as soon as they pour upon the nest, they hasten down below in a great bustle to wake up the nurses, and bid them take the young ones out of their chambers and bring them up to the light, which these indefatigable

persons in speaking of the different forms and changes of insects. Who would imagine that caterpillar, grub, maggot, and larva, signified one and the same stage of the life of an insect? This abuse of terms cannot but render the knowledge of any science less easily retained than it would otherwise be

nor could all a mother's care do more than preserve it from injury. It is very possible that chemistry had some share in it, and when the tiny being first awoke in the shell the oxygen of the air undoubtedly was necessary to its health, and the fulfilment of its early functions, but no more. Not chemistry, nor electricity, nor heat, nor any other known force could effect this wonderful change of apparently inanimate fluid into a lively, active, and well-organized being; much less could either of these give it its de

he elegant robes of the lace-wing flies. To look at a number of larv?, all crawling over one another, and bearing perhaps not the most loving behaviour to each other as they scramble about, who would dream that, in a little while, those slowly moving bodies will be

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eir shape and character, we should be sorely perplexed to do so, and if we did, we should often in all probability be very far wrong. We need not go far for an illustration, first, of a larva like the perfect insect, and next, for one totally unlike it. Taking a candle and exploring into some snug hole

of instances; but in all in the ring-like marks or segments of the body, as they are called, which are thirteen in number. If the reader will take the trouble to count the rings in the larv? of different insects, he will generally find that they are thirteen in number. The g

perfect insect. Do not resemble! could any one believe that these strange, and some of the

bly an incorrect expression, as it appears that insects may possibly hear as well as feel by their means. At the side of the head are the eyes, which are formed much more simply than those of the perfect insect. Next is the mouth, provided with its upper and lower pair of jaws. Then there is the body and its legs; and lastly,

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ulars connected with the general h