Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/55

 it changes to a pupa, the stage in which it is to be transformed back into the form of its beetle parents. The final change is accomplished in less than a week, and the creature then emerges from the soil, now a fully-formed striped blister beetle.

The grasshoppers' eggs furnish food for many other insects besides the young blister beetles. There are species of flies and of small wasplike insects whose larvae feed in the egg-pods in much the same manner as do the triungulins, and there are still other species of general feeders that devour the locust eggs as a part of their miscellaneous diet. Notwithstanding all this destruction of the germs of their future progeny, however, the grasshoppers still thrive in abundance, for grasshoppers, like most other insects, put their trust in the admonition that there is safety in numbers. So many eggs are produced and stored away in the ground each season that the whole force of their enemies combined can not destroy them all, and enough are sure to come through intact to render certain the continuance of the species. Thus we see that nature has various ways of accomplishing her ends—she might have given the grasshopper eggs better protection in the pods, but, being usually careless of individuals, she chose to guarantee perpetuance with fertility.