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One of them provides me with seventeen cells, the highest number appearing in my census of the Megachile clan. Most of them are lodged in the nymphal chamber of the Capricorn; and, as the spacious recess is too wide for a single row, the cells are arranged in three parallel series. The remainder, in a single string, occupy the vestibule, which is completed and filled up by the terminal barricade.
If attempts at usurpation were to be made, the owner of the Snail-shell would know how to enforce her rights as the first occupant. For the summer Resin-bee, A. bellicosum, the conditions are very different. At the moment when the Osmia is building, she is still in the larval, or at most in the nymphal stage.
In July, when the secondary larva passes into the pseudochrysalid stage, the tertiary larva passes into the nymphal stage, still inside the double vesicular envelope. Its skin splits along the back in front; and with the assistance of a few feeble contractions, which reappear at this juncture, it is thrust behind in the shape of a little ball.
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.
The larva of the Meloidæ, therefore, undergo four moults before attaining the nymphal state; and after each moult their characteristics alter most profoundly.
Not long ago, in winter, I took from the chrysalis of a great peacock moth four hundred and forty-nine parasites belonging to the same group. The whole substance of the future moth had disappeared, all but the nymphal wrapper, which was intact and formed a handsome Russia-leather wallet. The worm grubs were here heaped up and squeezed together to the point of sticking to one another.
For what reason does the hernia, once the keg is staved, continue swollen and projecting? I take it to be a waste pocket into which the insect momentarily forces back its reserves of blood in order to diminish the bulk of the body to that extent and to extract it more easily from the nymphal slough and afterwards from the narrow channel of the shell.
With as much certainty as though I had him before my eyes at the moment when he divests himself of his nymphal swaddling-bands, I see him a dull red, rusty or crimson, excepting on the wing-covers and the abdomen, which are at first colourless and presently turn the same colour as the rest.
This time the problem of the victuals is solved. When I compare the larval slough sticking to the Scolia's cocoons with the Cetonia-larvae or, better, with the skin cast by these larvae, under cover of the cocoon, at the moment of the nymphal transformation, I establish an absolute identity. The Two-banded Scolia rations each of her eggs with a Cetonia-grub.
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 the 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.
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