Nature biographies; the lives of some every-day butterflies; moths; grasshoppers and flies . before in the White Mountainsof New Hampshire. His Telenomus had been seenas mine had, engaged in ovipositing as soon as the eggswere laid. A MOTH THAT FAILED. Last October I found a large green Sphinx caterpillarupon the under side of a willow leaf. I put it in a box,thinking to rear it to the beautiful moth into which in theusual course of nature it would change. The box w^as 128 ?MMMHHH^MMIH^I^HHHHiHHH Studies of Insect Parasites. left in the carriage over night; when I came to lookfor the insect th
Nature biographies; the lives of some every-day butterflies; moths; grasshoppers and flies . before in the White Mountainsof New Hampshire. His Telenomus had been seenas mine had, engaged in ovipositing as soon as the eggswere laid. A MOTH THAT FAILED. Last October I found a large green Sphinx caterpillarupon the under side of a willow leaf. I put it in a box,thinking to rear it to the beautiful moth into which in theusual course of nature it would change. The box w^as 128 ?MMMHHH^MMIH^I^HHHHiHHH Studies of Insect Parasites. left in the carriage over night; when I came to lookfor the insect the next morning, it had escaped from itsprison and was, I supposed, lost. But happening tolook in the bottom of the carriage I found my prisonerin a hapless plight. It was resting on the edge of themat, and w^as covered and surrounded with a mass ofsmall w^hite oval objects, most of them attached to thecaterpillar, but many attached to the board on the bot-tom of the carriage. The caterpillar was half dead, without sufBcient strengthlo crawl away from the encompassing cocoons. For these. Fig. 122. — Sphinx Caterpillar with Cocoons of Parasites. were the cocoons of parasites. The little creatures thatmade them had come from inside the caterpillar. Theirprevious history was simply this: one day, a few weeksbefore, a small black four-winged fly had alighted on thelarva, probably as it was resting upon the back of thewillow leaf, and had inserted beneath its skin, by means ofa sharply pointed ovipositor, a large number of tiny suppose that these eggs are deposited one in a place,so that they are scattered about different portions of thebody, near the surface, but I have never been so fortunateas to see the fly in the act, nor have I read any record ofany one else having done so. 129 Nature Biographies. The eggs soon hatch into tiny footless maggots thatderive their nourishment from the fatty tissues of theirhost. They increase gradually in size for a short time. Asthey appr
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectinsects, bookyear1901
