Part 67

Mabel says it is just what she thought it was--a larva.

Yes, it is a larva.

You see it looks a little like the lacewing larva, and it, too, belongs to the Neuroptera.

What jaws!

How do you suppose it makes its tunnel?

If we give it plenty of sand, and keep very quiet, perhaps it will go to work.

There! it is throwing the sand about.

May says it is using its own head as a trowel. Yes, it is shovelling the sand away with its head.

Why is Ned laughing? Oh, see the ant lion he is watching! An ant slid part way down its funnel and tried to climb out again, and the ant lion down below is flinging sand at it.

There! it has succeeded in making the poor ant slip; down it goes, and now the ant lion has seized it and dragged it down under the ground.

It is easy to find these pit-falls of the ant lion in sand banks in the summer-time.

Yes, May, the ant lions eat many ants, and they moult and grow, and, finally, they, too, make a little cocoon about themselves.

Yes, the little silken room they weave we call a cocoon, but the ant lions make theirs of silk and sand.

Within the cocoon they become motionless pupae, and finally appear as silver-winged little creatures that bear no resemblance to the large-jawed, ever hungry, ant lion.

May says she thinks the Neuroptera differ from all the other orders in the way the larvae transform.

That is true, May, they do.

In no other order that we have studied do the insects go into the pupal state to undergo the final transformation.

Who remembers what the young of insects that undergo an incomplete metamorphosis are sometimes called?

Dear me, you all remember!

Yes, the young are sometimes called nymphs.

The nymphs do not change into pupae.

The young grasshoppers do not change into motionless pupae, they just keep on growing until they are perfect adults.

Young grasshoppers are sometimes called nymphs instead of larvae.

THE LITTLE CADDICE FLIES

Here we are in the woods again.

How sweet it smells!

Let us sit down by this brook and look into it.

It is such a clear little stream, with fine sand and little pebbles at the bottom.