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It knows that the Cerambyx, in his stiff armour, will never be able to turn and make for the orifice of the cell; and it takes care to fall into its nymphal sleep with its head to the door. It knows how soft the pupa's flesh will be and upholsters the bedroom with velvet.
It knows that the Cerambyx, in his stiff armour, will never be able to turn and make for the orifice of the cell; and it takes care to fall into its nymphal sleep with its head to the door. It knows how soft the pupa's flesh will be and upholsters the bedroom with velvet.
This is also the opinion expressed by Newport. Be this as it may, I found at the end of August one of these pseudochrysalids which had already attained the nymphal stage. It is with the help of this precious capture that I shall be able to finish the story of the Oil-beetle's development.
Should the grub forget this little formality, should it lie down to its nymphal sleep with its head at the back of the cell, the Capricorn is infallibly lost: his cradle becomes a hopeless dungeon. But there is no fear of this danger: the knowledge of our bit of an intestine is too sound in things of the future for the grub to neglect the formality of keeping its head to the door.
The head makes its appearance. The hydrocephalous monster continues the play of her forehead, while herself remaining stationary. Inside the pupa, a delicate work is being performed: the casting of the white nymphal tunic. All through this operation, the hernia is still projecting.
The irritability, therefore, which in the pseudochrysalis is suspended for a whole year, reawakens for a moment, to relapse instantly into the deepest torpor. This torpor will be partly dispelled only at the moment of the passing into the nymphal stage, to return immediately afterwards and last until the insect attains the perfect state.
It gives me two hundred and fifty Halicti. Well, in this number of Bees, collected in the burrow before any have emerged, I perceive none, absolutely none but females; or, to be mathematically accurate, I find just one male, one alone; and he is so small and feeble that he dies without quite succeeding in divesting himself of his nymphal bands. This solitary male is certainly accidental.
The insect is then in the nymphal stage; and it is easy, under this form, to distinguish the two sexes by the length of the antennae, which are larger in the males, and by the glassy protuberances on the forehead, the sign of the future armour of the females.
Let us recapitulate the strange metamorphoses which I have sketched. Every Beetle-larva, before attaining the nymphal stage, undergoes a greater or smaller number of moults, of changes of skin; but these moults, which are intended to favour the development of the larva by ridding it of covering that has become too tight for it, in no way alter its external shape.
The Sitares, the Meloes, the Zonites and apparently other Meloidæ, possibly all of them, are in their earliest infancy parasites of the harvesting Bees. The larva of the Meloidæ, before reaching the nymphal state, passes through four forms, which I call the primary larva, the secondary larva, the pseudochrysalis and the tertiary larva.
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