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He who says Midge says Fly, Dipteron, two-winged insect; and our friend has four wings, one and all adapted for flying. By virtue of this characteristic and others no less important, she belongs to the order of Hymenoptera. Our Midge, the Microgaster, is the size of an average Gnat. She measures 3 or 4 millimetres. In spite of this likeness, they are easily distinguished.
A small Hymenopteron, almost invisible, the Microgaster glomeratus, is entrusted with the destruction of the cabbage caterpillar; the cochineal wages war to the death upon the green- fly; the Ammophila is the predestined murderer of the harvest Noctuela, whose misdeeds in a beetroot country often amount to a disaster.
I lodge these groups, one by one, in separate glass tubes, thus forming a collection on which I can draw at will, while, in view of my experiments, I keep under observation the whole swarm produced by one caterpillar. The adult Microgaster appears a fortnight later, in the middle of June. There are fifty in the first tube examined.
He classifies his subjects, dividing them into regiments with barbarous labels, a work which seems to him the highest expression of entomological science. Names, nothing but names: the rest hardly counts. The persecutor of the Pieris used to be called Microgaster, that is to say, little belly: to-day she is called Apanteles, that is to say, the incomplete. What a fine step forward!
Were he to see her by accident, flitting around the plant which she protects, he would take no notice of her, would not suspect the service rendered. I propose to set forth the tiny midget's deserts. Scientists call her Microgaster glomeratus. What exactly was in the mind of the author of the name Microgaster, which means little belly? Did he intend to allude to the insignificance of the abdomen?
I have had the skin of the caterpillar and this little heap of yellow Microgaster Cocoons sent me to examine, and have been seriously asked whether this was not a true case of Parthenogenesis; the suggestion being that the caterpillar had actually laid eggs, instead of waiting until it had become a moth, and that its efforts, to alter the course of nature, had been too much for its constitution and it had died in the act!
They have missed a suitable support, that is to say, the silky carpet provided by the dying caterpillar. No matter: I have seen enough to convince me. The larvae of the Microgaster do not eat in the strict sense of the word; they live on soup; and that soup is the caterpillar's blood. Examine the parasites closely and you shall see that their diet is bound to be a liquid one.
Those of you who live in the country must often have seen on palings little heaps containing a dozen or more of the small yellow Microgaster Cocoons, and if these are examined carefully they will be found to be surrounding the skin of a caterpillar. It is curious what mistakes can be made even by intelligent persons.
These tangled intestines swarm with little lazy grubs, varying greatly in number, from ten or twenty at least to sometimes half a hundred. They are the offspring of the Microgaster. What do they feed on?
We now know all about it! Can our friend at least tell us how "the Little Belly" or "the Incomplete" gets into the caterpillar? Not a bit of it! A book which, judging by its recent date, should be the faithful echo of our actual knowledge, informs us that the Microgaster inserts her eggs direct into the caterpillar's body.
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