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Updated: May 6, 2025
The irritability, therefore, which in the pseudochrysalis is suspended for a whole year, reawakens for a moment, to relapse instantly into the deepest torpor. This torpor will be partly dispelled only at the moment of the passing into the nymphal stage, to return immediately afterwards and last until the insect attains the perfect state.
When, for the first time, the stiff shell encloses a body which does not adhere to the rest, this body is a nymph and nothing else. The wall surrounding it is a dull white inside. I attribute this colouring to the cast skin of the tertiary larva, which was inseparably fixed to the shell of the pseudochrysalis.
It is not free, as witness its cast skin, which fits so precisely to the envelope of the pseudochrysalis. This form would therefore pass unperceived if its existence were not proclaimed by the membrane which lines the inside of the pseudochrysalid pouch. To complete the story of the Zonites, the primary larva is lacking.
As a standard of comparison, the Four-spotted Mylabris, of a more imposing size, was added to the first two. A fourth, Zonitis mutica, whom I did not need to consult, knowing that she was not connected with the matter in hand and being familiar with her pseudochrysalis, completed my school of egg-layers. I proposed, if possible, to obtain her primary larva.
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.
Newport did not see the larva of the Oil-beetle in its second form, that which it displays when it is eating the mess of honey hoarded by the Bees, but he did see its moulted skin half-covering the pseudochrysalis which I have just mentioned.
Never mind: let's go back to our sand-hill and dig and have another search. I must have the larva that comes before the pseudochrysalis; I must, if possible, have the insect that comes out of it." Success responded amply to our zeal. We found a goodly number of pseudochrysalids. More often still, we unearthed larvæ which were busy eating the Mantes, the rations of the Tachytes.
There can be no doubt that this inner layer represents the tertiary larva, whose skin is left adhering to the envelope of the pseudochrysalis. It is fairly thick and tough, but I cannot detach it except in shreds, so closely does it adhere to the horny, crumbly sheath.
I have spoken of the first in another volume; I have mentioned its pseudochrysalis found in the cells of two Osmiæ, namely, the Three-pronged Osmia, which piles its cells in a dry bramble-stem, and the Three-horned Osmia and also Latreille's Osmia, both of which exploit the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds.
The last pair is rather smaller than the rest, a peculiarity which we have already noted in the larva which precedes the pseudochrysalis. On comparing the pseudochrysalids of the Oil-beetles and Sitares, we observe a most striking similarity between the two. The same structure occurs in both, down to the smallest details.
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