Any one who has ever been on a long sea-voyage will find it easy to supply us with another example of a vegetable-food devouring larva. The hard substances commonly called captain's biscuits are the objects of attack, together with flour, peas, and similar articles of food, and the attacking insect is the larva of the meal-worm, the entomological title of which is _Tenebrio molitor_. In vain does the ship's cook, with all his art, prepare a soup composed of the richest ingredients, and calculated, as one would think, to gratify the taste of the greatest epicure. The larvæ have been beforehand with him; they have attacked and become mixed with the flour or the peas; and when the soup which has cost him so much pains is brought to table, not even the keen appetite of seafaring people can reconcile them to it, for it is full of the dead bodies of these larvæ. So likewise is the biscuit, and in disgust the guests are compelled to confine their attention principally to such articles of food as are unpalatable to their insect enemies.
We have but little experience, in our favoured land, of the more extensive domestic destructions wrought by larvæ. But in hot countries they become formidable, by reason of their numbers. In India,[F] particularly during the rainy season, the interior of the houses swarms with them; some climb the walls, some ascend the table, some feast on the viands, and altogether, by their numbers and appearance, they produce a degree of disgust and loathing at food, which cannot be overcome for a long time by fresh residents. We may mention, before concluding this part of our subject, that of those that do annoy us domestically, some have appetites for very strange kinds of food, some love wine, some vinegar, some butter and cheese; some revel in a pot of preserves, some attack our meat, and one is mentioned by Réaumur as delighting in _chocolate_!
If surprise be expressed that we have dwelt so long upon the eating propensities of larvæ, let it be remembered that it was formerly said at p. 94, that the principal duty of the larva, so long as it lived, was _to eat_. It is born often only to eat as much as possible, and to grow as large as possible within a given time; and in obedience to this principle, we find larvæ with the sharpest of sharp appetites embark in their career of existence, eating from their birth, all the way along to their final change. It is therefore, obviously, a very important part of the larva's history of which we have been speaking for some pages past. Considering the fact to have been now brought into sufficient prominence, we shall proceed to notice the rate at which larvæ grow, and the actual quantities of food some of them devour. Let us speak of the last first.