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Natural selection may modify and adapt the larva of an insect to a score of contingencies, wholly different from those which concern the mature insect; and these modifications may affect, through correlation, the structure of the adult.
If this is correct, a short-lived larva stage must, instead of causing small cocoons, produce just the contrary effect." In another letter, dated November 25, 1881, my correspondent says: "I am sorry that you have not had better success in the rearing of your larvae, but you should not despair.
If only the beetle could climb how rapidly three or four would rid our cabbages of that grievous pest, the larva of the white cabbage butterfly! Alas! the best have always some failing, some vice. To exterminate caterpillars: that is the true vocation of the Golden Gardener.
We have appropriate names for all the aspects of life in the Insect: we call it Larva in its first or Worm-like period, Chrysalis in its second or Crustacean-like phase of life, and Imago in its third and last condition as Winged Insect.
They were also shed for the beautiful Queen who, unmindful of the spectators, rested her noble brow, with its coronal of pearls, upon his mighty shoulder. But the grief did not last long, for Mark Antony, shouted: "Hence with melancholy! We do not need the larva! The Romans imitated this custom by sending the larva, a statuette in the form of a skeleton, to make the round of the revellers.
If we take the larva from the cell and place it on a hard substance, to observe it more readily, we see that the inordinate protuberance of the abdomen, by lifting the thorax from the ground, prevents the legs from finding a support.
First of all, to safeguard the operator, a stab in the mouth, that point so terribly armed, the most formidable of all; then, to safeguard the larva, a second stab in the nerve-centres of the thorax, to suppress the power of movement.
And yet the Wasp, an absolute novice, has to select, for the thrust of its poisoned weapon, one single point, narrowly restricted and hidden in the folds of the larva's body. If she miscalculates, she may be killed: the larva, irritated by the smarting puncture, is strong enough to disembowel her with the tusks of its mandibles.
Before describing the larva in detail we will wait for it to attain its full development, which cannot take long, for the provisions are rapidly diminishing. The rapidity however is not to be compared with that with which the gluttonous larvæ of the Anthophora consume their food.
To avoid putrefaction of victuals which last overlong and are not consumed according to the method indispensable to their preservation, I employ small game, each piece of which can be finished by the larva at a single sitting, or at most in a single day.
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