enemy plunges the points of his jaws into its body, and, having sucked out all its juices, throws out the empty skin to some distance, that the den may not become frightful to others by seeing their fellow carcasses strewed about. This done, the insect mounts the edges of his pit, and repairs whatever injury it may have sustained; and then, descending, himself at the bottom.

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The jaws of this creature are hollow, and serve as pumps to draw into its stomach the juices of those insects on which it feeds; for in the head there is no mouth, nor any other organ which can answer the same purpose. The horns being therefore so necessary to its life, nature has provided for the restoring of them in case of accident; for, if cut off, they are found to grow again.

The food this creature procures by its pit can be but little; and as it has no power of catching its prey in any other other way, its motions being very slow, some persons have believed that its catching now and then an ant by this means, was rathe an act of diversion than hunger. But though the Ant-lion will live a long time without food, and even pass through all its changes when shut up in a box, yet it is always ready to eat when food is offered to it. It always appears starved and small when kept thus; and if a fly is given to it in that hungry state, it will suck out all its juices so perfectly that the remaining shell may be rubbed to powder between the fingers, whilst the body of the creature that has sucked it appears remarkably swelled and distended. For the sake of experiment, M. Poupart put one of them

into a wooden box with some sand, and covered it with a glass, so as to exclude every other insect. Here it formed its cone, and watched as usual for prey, though in vain. Thus he kept it for several months, while in an adjoining box he kept another of the same species, which he supplied with food by giving it ants and flies pretty regularly. He could perceive no difference between the movements or actions of the two; but when he took them from their holes, he found the abdomen of that which had received no food was shrunk to a very diminutive size, whilst the other retained its proper shape.

When the Ant-lion has lived its usual time in the larva state, it leaves its pit, and buries itself under the surface of the sand. Here it incloses itself in a fine web, in which it is to pass its transformation into a winged state. This web is made of a sort of silk, which the creature spins in the manner of the spider, and of a quantity of the grains of sand ceinented together by a glutinous humour which flows from its pores. This case, however, would be too harsh and coarse for the body of the creature, and therefore it serves only for the covering, to defend it from external injuries; the animal spinning one of pure and incomparably fine silk, of a beautiful pearl colour, within it, which covers its whole body.

When it has lain some time in this case, it throws off its outer skin, and becomes an oblong nymph or chrysalis, in which a careful eye may trace the form of the fly into which it is to be transformed. This nymph makes its way about half out of the shell,

and remains in this condition, but without further life or motion, till the perfect fly comes out at a slit in the back. In this last state, as I have before observed, it much resembles the dragon-flies.

When this insect forms its pit in a bed of pure sand, it is made and repaired with great ease; but, where it meets with other substances among the sand, the labour becomes much more embarrassing. If, for instance, when the creature has half formed it, it comes to a stone of some moderate size, it does not desert the work on this accouut, but goes on, intending to remove that impediment the last. When the pit is finished, it crawls backward up the side of the place where the stone is; and, getting its tail under it, takes great pains and time to get it on a true poise, and then begins to crawl backward with it up the edge to the top of the pit to get it out of the way. It is a very common thing to see the Ant-lion labouring in this manner at a stone four times as big as its own body; and as it can only move backward, and the poise is difficult to keep, especially up a slope of such crumbling matter as sand, which moulders away from under its feet, and necessarily alters the position of its body, the stone very frequently rolls down, when near the verge, quite to the bottorn. In this case the animal attacks it again in the same way, and is not often discouraged by five or six miscarriages; but continues its struggles so long that it at length gets it over the verge of the place. When it has done this, it does not leave it there, lest it should roll in again; but is always at the pains of pushing

it further on, till it has removed it to a necessary distance from the edge of the pit.

The insect, in a perfect state, is but seldom found; it is, however, sometimes to be met with in sandy places and near rivulets. It is marked in Dr. Turton's translation of the Systema Natura, as a native of this country, but I have never yet heard of one's discovering it.

THE ICHNEUMON TRIBE*.

OLID

ALL the Ichneumons are parasitical; their larvæ deriving support from other insects. The female, when about to lay her eggs, perforates with her sting either the body or the nidus of some other insect or caterpillar, and deposits them there. The sting of one of the species, though extremely fine, is so strong as to penetrate through mortar and plaster. The food of the family to be produced from the eggs of this fly is the larvae of wasps or mason-bees; for it no sooner discovers one of those nests than it fixes on it, and in a moment bores through the mortar of which it is built.

Some species agglutinate their eggs upon caterpillars; others penetrate their bodies, and deposit the eggs in their inside. When the larvae are hatched, the head is so situated that they pierce the caterpillars, and penetrate to their very entrails. These larvæ suck the nutritious juices of the creatures without attacking their vitals; for they seem to be all the time perfectly healthy, and even sometimes are enabled to transform themselves into chrysalids. "A friend of mine," says Dr. Derham, "put about forty large caterpillars, collected from cabbages, on some bran and a few leaves, into a box, and covered it with gauze to prevent escape.

* The Linnæan order of HYMENOPTEROUS INSECTS commences here.