A PERSISTENT PARASITE

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“Many members of the animal kingdom change their form in the course of their existence, and with the new structure adopt also a new way of living. Thus the caterpillar and the butterfly, for example, are in reality the same creature, but very different in shape and habits. The caterpillar drags itself heavily over the plant, gnawing the foliage; the butterfly, furnished with light and graceful wings, flies from flower to flower, imbibing a sugary liquor from each with its long proboscis. The cherry worm grows in the midst of the juice that feeds it; after attaining full size it falls from the tree with the damaged fruit and hastens to bury itself in the ground, there to undergo its transformation. Next spring it comes forth in the form of an elegant fly that lives on honey from the flowers and never again touches a cherry except to deposit its eggs therein, one by one. In the same way, again, the nut worm, after finishing its growth, bores a hole in the firm shell, emerges from its fortress, and buries itself for a time in the soil. There it becomes a beetle with a long proboscis, the so-called nut weevil, which leaves its subterranean retreat in the spring and takes up its quarters on the foliage of a nut tree, where it lays its eggs in the growing nuts.