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What can they know about the kind of food the larva will want when it leaves the egg a food so different from their own? What, again, can they know about the quantity of food that will be necessary? How much of all this at least can they know consciously?
Good in themselves, in a general way, these several victuals may be noxious to a consumer who is not used to them. The larva which dotes on Locust may find caterpillar a detestable fare; and that which revels in caterpillar may hold Locust in horror.
This is the stroke of the Philanthus, who kills her Bee by stinging her from below, under the chin. The Scolia needed a motionless but not dead victim, one that would supply fresh victuals; she will now have only a corpse, which will soon go bad and poison the larva. With a slant towards the thorax, the sting wounds the little mass of nerve-cells in the thorax.
Another and still more eloquent fact will finally convince whoso may yet be doubting. The ration of honey stored up in a cell is evidently measured by the needs of the coming larva. There is neither too much nor too little. How does the Bee know when the proper quantity is reached?
Cirripedes afford a good instance of this: even the illustrious Cuvier did not perceive that a barnacle was a crustacean: but a glance at the larva shows this in an unmistakable manner. So again the two main divisions of cirripedes, the pedunculated and sessile, though differing widely in external appearance, have larvae in all their stages barely distinguishable.
It is only thus that the wonderful tranquillity and order which we observe could be attained. Thus, for example, the larva of the bee itself spins the silky chamber in which it is to become a chrysalis, but other bees must close it with its lid of wax.
The lilies and their pads lie motionless, and in and out through the shadowy depths, around the long stems, float a school of half a dozen little sunfish. They move slowly, turning from side to side all at once as if impelled by one idea. Now and then one will dart aside and snap up a beetle or mosquito larva, then swing back to its place among its fellows.
It is the usual fly larva, the common maggot, shaped like an elongated cone, pointed in front, truncated behind, where two little red spots show, level with the skin: these are the breathing holes.
This larva, which had finished its ration the day before, was discovered next day in another chamber, where it was sharing its neighbour's repast. It had therefore climbed the partition, which for that matter was of no great height, or else had forced its way through some chink.
We cannot doubt that the burrow is a kind of meteorological observatory, and that its inhabitant takes note of the weather without. Buried underground at a depth of twelve or fifteen inches, the larva, when ripe for escape, could hardly judge whether the meteorological conditions were favourable.
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