SOME WINGLESS INSECTS 



165 



within the mother's body and the larva, nourished by a milky 

 maternal secretion, is not born until it has attained its 

 full growth. Quickly after birth, the larval cuticle becomes 

 converted into a puparium (Fig. 93 b c) within which the pupa 

 is formed, and from which, later on, the perfect insect emerges, 

 the development being thus a curious and extreme modification 

 of the type found in the blue-bottle group. 



In the maggot of Melophagus for example, may be detected 1 

 the inpushing that gives rise to the adult head-capsule, and 

 imaginal buds of the feelers, jaws and legs corresponding 

 closely to the similar structures in the larva of a house-fly or 

 blow-fly. This life-history would in itself stamp the wingless 



FIG. 94. BEE " LOUSE " (Braula caeca), x 24. 

 From Carpenter, Econ. Proc. R. Dublin Soc. II. 



insects that undergo it as degraded muscoid Diptera, and there 

 are two other families of wingless parasites the strange 

 NycteriUdae of bats and the minute Braulidae (Fig. 94) that 

 live on bees not closely related to the Sheep-ked, the 

 former at least showing by their similar development that 

 they belong to the same great section of the two-winged 

 flies, though no trace of wings is apparent on them at any 

 stage. 



A mode of development, in some respects parallel to that 

 displayed by the Hippoboscidae and their allies, but carried 

 farther, is shown in those most remarkably aberrant Diptera, 



1 H. S. Pratt : " Beitrage zur Kenntnis der Pupiparen. Die Larve 

 von Melophagus ovinus ". Arch. /. Naturgesch., LIX. i. 1893. 



