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It was by this time ten o'clock, and the two younger children were still to be heard shouting to one another up stairs about the leaves for their chrysalids.
The soil was all torn up for a space of about an acre, probably the only soil for miles except along streams and by springs penetrable by beaks until the sun came out; and the thrush feasted royally upon hibernating caterpillars and chrysalids that would have become moths, beetle larvae all curled up and asleep, and other pests; and he must have done a considerable amount of good in that place during the next hour or so.
She gave him for his pains sometimes a light, and sometimes a dark butterfly, with different degrees of blurred or enlarged and vivid markings, from chrysalids subjected to exactly the same amount of exposure. The Butterfly Man was burning to complete his notes, already assuming the proportions of that very exact and valuable book they were afterward to become.
After his breathing grew quieter, sitting there in silence she could hear odd sounds, rustling, squeaking sounds from the box of Death’s Head chrysalids on the night table beside his bed. The pupæ of the Death’s Head were making merry in anticipation of the rapidly approaching change the Great Adventure of their lives the coming metamorphosis. The youth lay asleep now.
It is an interesting fact that many chrysalids undergo precisely similar changes of colour in adaptation to the background against which they suspend themselves, being grey on a grey surface, green on a green one, and even half black and half red when hung up against pieces of particoloured paper.
The secondary larva is soft and differs completely from the primary larva in its external characteristics. It feeds upon the honey contained in the usurped cell. The pseudochrysalis is a body deprived of all movement and clad in horny integuments which may be compared with those of the pupæ and chrysalids.
Perhaps under normal conditions metamorphosis takes place without this protection. However, the moth whom I expected to see was beyond the limits of the possible. In the middle of May, a month after the operation on the caterpillars, my three chrysalids, still incomplete underneath, in the three or four middle segments, withered and at last went mouldy. Is the evidence conclusive this time?
Thou reasonest, said my guide, as one of thine own degree, who to the eyes of the full-born ever look like chrysalids, closed round in a web of their own weaving; and who shall blame thee until thou thyself shinest within thyself? Understand that it is never advantage to himself that moveth a man in this kingdom to undertake this or that.
And while we had been paying attention to other things, one of these chrysalids had been paying strict attention to its own business, the beautiful and important business of becoming a butterfly. Flint discovered it first, and gave a pleased exclamation. "Look! Look! A Turnus, father! The first Turnus of the year!" The insect had been out for an hour or two, but was not yet quite ready to fly.
Their paralysis is incomplete, as is proved by their contortions when I irritate them and shown, on the other hand, by a very important fact. I have sometimes taken from Eumenes Amedei's cell a few heads of game half transformed into chrysalids. It is evident that the transformation was effected in the cell itself and, therefore, after the operation which the Wasp had performed upon them.
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