Natural history of insects : comprising their architecture, transformations, senses, food, habits--collection, preservation and arrangement . the cuticle of the leaf,and remaining till the juices flowing from the woundenveloped it, and acquired consistence by exposureto the air. This opinion, however, plausible as itappeared to be, was at once disproved by finding un-hatched eggs on opening the galls. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the mother gall-fly making a hole in the plant for the purpose ofdepositing her eggs. She is furnished with anadmirable ovipositor for that express purpose, an
Natural history of insects : comprising their architecture, transformations, senses, food, habits--collection, preservation and arrangement . the cuticle of the leaf,and remaining till the juices flowing from the woundenveloped it, and acquired consistence by exposureto the air. This opinion, however, plausible as itappeared to be, was at once disproved by finding un-hatched eggs on opening the galls. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the mother gall-fly making a hole in the plant for the purpose ofdepositing her eggs. She is furnished with anadmirable ovipositor for that express purpose, andSwammerdam actually saw a gall-fly thus deposit-ing her eggs. In some of these insects the ovi-positor is conspicuously long, even when the insectis at rest; but in others, not above a line or twoof it is visible, till the belly of the insect be gently 372 [NSECT ARCHITECTURE. pressed. When this is done to the fly that pro-duces the currant-gall of the oak, the ovipositor maybe seen issuing trom a sheath in form of a smallcurved needle, of a chesnut-brown colour, and of ahorny substance, and three times as long as it at Ovipositor of gall-Jiy greatly magnified. What is most remarkable in this ovipositor is, thatit is much longer than the whole body of the insect,in whose belly it is lodged in a sheath, and from itshorny nature, it cannot be either shortened or length-ened. It is on this account that it is bent into thesame curve as the body of the insect. The me-chanism by which this is effected is similar to thatof the tongue of a woodpecker [j^icus), which,though rather short, can be darted out far beyondthe beak, by means of the hyoid-bone* being thin androlled up like the spring of a watch. The base ofthe ovipositor of the gall-fly is, in a similar way,placed near the anus, runs along the curvature of theback, makes a turn at the breast, and then, followingthe curve of the belly, appears again near where itoriginates. We copy from R aumur his accuratesketch
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookidnaturalhistoryof01bos, booksubjectinsects
