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Updated: June 6, 2025
Having made these preparations, the larva withdraws, strengthening the wooden screen, however, with a layer of fine sawdust; it reaches the end of the round gallery, which is prolonged by the completely choked flat gallery; and here, scorning a special chamber or any upholstery, it goes to sleep for the nymphosis, with its head towards the exit.
The entrance is blocked first by a plug of fibrous sawdust, then by a chalky lid, similar, except in point of size, to that with which we are already familiar. A thick layer of fine sawdust packed into the concavity of the chalky lid, completes the barricade. Need I add that the grub lies down and goes to sleep, for the nymphosis, with its head against the door?
To prepare the door of exit in advance is not enough; the grub must also provide for the tranquillity essential to the delicate processes of nymphosis. An intruder might enter by the open door and injure the helpless nymph. This passage must therefore remain closed. But how? As the grub bores the passage of exit it consumes the farinaceous matter without leaving a crumb.
The Mason-bee's grub is therefore emptied by the Leucopsis' larva while it is in a semifluid state and deep in the torpor of the nymphosis. The last fortnight in July and the first fortnight in August are the best times to witness the repast, which I have seen going on for twelve and fourteen days.
The question is far above, our inane means. The biography of the Anthrax is now complete, save for the details relating to the egg, as yet unknown. In the vast majority of insects subject to metamorphoses, the hatching yields the larval form which will remain unchanged until the nymphosis.
Each one, supporting himself on the trellis, first weaves around himself a thin carpet of white silk, which will form the sustaining layer at the time of the laborious and delicate work of the nymphosis. He fixes his rear-end to this base by a silk pad and his fore-part by a strap that passes under his shoulders and is fixed on either side to the carpet.
The Nest-building Odynerus showed us in her cells a few Chrysomela-larvae fixed by the hinder part to the side of the reed. The grub fastens itself in this way to the poplar-leaf to obtain a purchase when the moment has come for leaving the larval slough. Do not these preparations for the nymphosis tell us plainly that the creature is not dead?
If the larva had taken the precaution to place itself in a different direction when preparing for the nymphosis, to turn its head towards the nearest point of the bark instead of turning it lengthwise with the trunk, obviously the adult would escape more easily: he would merely have to gnaw straight in front of him in order to pass through the minimum thickness.
Indeed, since this basic experiment I have discovered grains of uric acid in the adipose tissue of the larvæ of all the Hunting Wasps of our parts, as well as in the Bees at the moment of the nymphosis.
At the bottom of this pseudochrysalidal sheath I find a little white wad which, when placed in water, softened and then patiently unravelled with the tip of a paint-brush, yields a white, powdery substance, which is uric acid, the usual product of the work of the nymphosis, and a rumpled membrane, in which I recognize the cast skin of the nymph.
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