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As soon as she has located the exact position of the caterpillar, she unsheathes a long delicate ovipositor, with which she is provided, and drills it right through the intervening solid wood until it pierces the body of the caterpillar; she then lays an egg down that long tube into its body and repeats the process two or three times.
Thus the ovipositor of the bee has a history, and is not apparently a special creation, but a structure gradually developed to subserve the use of a defensive organ. So the organs of special sense in insects are in most cases simply altered hairs. The hairs themselves are modified epithelial cells.
With eager, jerky steps, she explores the morsel of game, goes from the head to the tail, returns from the tail to the head, repeats the action several times and at last settles near an eye, a dimmed eye sunk into its socket. The ovipositor bends at a right angle and dives into the junction of the beak, straight down to the root. Then the eggs are emitted for nearly half an hour.
One result, one which I fully expected, compensates me straightway for all my weary waitings. Under each spot marked in black, under each spot whence I saw the ovipositor withdrawn, I always find a cell, with not a single exception. And yet there are intervals of solid stone between the cells: the partition-walls alone would account for some.
Knowing that the little insect was provided with a keen-edged ovipositor, and was in the habit of thrusting its tiny eggs beneath the bark, and realizing, too, that these strange tufts were of course in some way connected with the maternal instinct, I was led to investigate.
We would venture to regard the ovipositor of insects as probably representing three pairs of abdominal legs, comparable with those of the Myriopods, and even, as we have suggested in another place, the three pairs of jointed spinnerets of spiders.
Their ovipositor extended telescope fashion, they heap egg upon egg. With the point of their hesitating, groping instrument, they try to lodge each germ, as it comes, farther into the mass. Around the serious, red-eyed matrons, the Ants circle, intent on pillage. Many of them make off with a greenbottle egg between their teeth.
The spring of the Podura seems to be the homologue of the third pair of these tubercles, and is inserted on the penultimate segment. This comparison I have been able to make from a study of the embryology of Isotoma. Another organ, and one which, so far as I am aware, has been overlooked by previous observers, I am disposed to consider as possibly an ovipositor.
This act is accomplished by a knife-like ovipositor, which literally gouges a deep gash into the tender wood of various twigs, a number of the eggs being implanted in its depths, often causing the death of the branch.
But they still retain the ovipositor, which is converted into a sting, and supplied with a poisonous liquid to eject afterwards into the wound.
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