HETEROMERA 275 



newly hatched Meloc has to get 011 to the body of the female of 

 one species of bee ; but it has no discrimination whatever of the 

 kind of object it requires, and as a matter of fact, passes with 

 surprising rapidity on to any hairy object that touches it ; hence 

 an enormous majority of the young are wasted by getting on to 

 all sorts of other Insects ; these larvae have been found in 

 numbers on hairy Coleoptera as well as on flies and bees of wrong 

 kinds ; the writer has ascertained by experiment that a camel's- 

 hair brush is as eagerly seized, and passed on to, by the young 

 Mcloe as a living Insect is. 



The histories of several other Cantharids have been more or 

 less completely discovered. Fabre has found the larva of 

 Cerocoma schaefferi attacking the stores of provisions laid up by 

 a fossorial wasp of the genus Tachytes, and consisting of 

 Orthoptera of the family Mantidae. The student who wishes 

 for further information may refer to M. Beauregard's work on 

 this family. 1 



Some half-dozen species of the genus Ceplialoon found in 

 Siberia, Japan, and North ' America, have, by some authorities, 

 been separated as the family Cephaloidae. Nothing is known 

 as to the metamorphosis of these rare beetles ; and at present it 

 is not necessary to distinguish them from Cantharidse. 



Fam. 76. Trictenotomidae. -Large Heteromera, with powerful 

 free projecting mandibles ; the antennae long, but with the terminal 

 three joints short, with angular projections on one side. This 

 family includes only two genera and seven or eight species. 

 They are very remarkable Insects ; Autocrates aenea being three 

 inches long. The family is of considerable interest, as it seems to 

 have no affinity with any other Coleoptera. The appearance of 

 the species somewhat reminds one of Lucanidae, or Prionides ; 

 but Trictenotomidae have even less relation to those beetles than 

 they have to the members of the Heteromerous series. The 

 Tricteuotomidae appear to be found only in the primitive forests 

 of the Indian and Indo-Malayan regions. Nothing is known as 

 to their life-histories. 



1 Les Insectes Vesicants, Paris 1890, 554 pp. Parts of this work were pre- 

 viously published in J. de I'Anat. Phys., xxi. xxii. xxiii. 1886 and 1887. 



