of the Oil Beetle, Meloe, and of the Strepsiptera. 331 



of the giants of the species, Stylops Spencil, is scarcely one-fourth of an inch in 

 length ; while the pigmy genus, Elenchus, is scarcely more than one-fourth even 

 of this dimension. But size in the material world, like space or time in the 

 ethereal or immaterial, is merely a relative condition, and is of little moment 

 to the philosophical inquirer, while engaged in investigating the laws by which 

 the Deity has ordained the development of structure, — the evocation of life, — 

 or the evolution of function and instinct. The organization and habits of the 

 tiny Stylops are as much proper subjects of investigation, of wonder and 

 admiration, to the right-thinking mind, as are those of the Leviathan of the 

 deep, or of the Elephant of the forest ; whilst their very diminutiveness and 

 isolation, like all microscopic analyses of organism, or singleness of action, 

 tend greatly to facilitate our investigation of principles, and lead us more 

 easily to understand those on which structure is formed, and function and 

 instinct are unfolded. 



Like the Meloes, the Strepsiptera are parasites on the Aculeata, the sand- 

 wasps, wasps and bees, which nidificate in banks of dry earth or sand exposed 

 to the sun ; localities as essential to the development of the parasites them- 

 selves as to that of the species which they infest. 



The first discovered of these singular insects, the Xenos vesparum of Rossi, 

 was regarded by him as constituting a new genus of Hymenoptera allied to 

 Ichneumon. Another species was discovered soon afterwards by our country- 

 man the Rev. William Kirby, who at once perceived, without being aware of 

 Rossi's discovery, that his insect, a new species, belonged not only to a new 

 genus, which he designated, from the form of its eyes and the bee it was 

 found on, Stylops Melittce, but that it constituted the type even of a new 

 Order of Insects. When a second species of Xenos, X. Peckii, was discovered 

 some time afterwards by Professor Peck of Boston, and communicated to 

 Mr. Kirhy, this gentleman then formed the species into an Order, which he 



Lewis. — In ditto, p. 305. part xiv., Nov. 1839, new species ? Van Diemen's Land. 

 Templeton. — Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. vol. iii. part 1. p. 51, 1838-1841. (Xenos Westwoodii.) 

 Siebold. — Wiegmann's Archiv, 1843. (Metamorphosis of Strepsiptera, larva, nymph, imago.) 

 Guerin. — Revue Zoologique (abstract of the preceding, with notes), March 1844, p. 111-118. 

 Newport. — Anniversary Address Ent. Soc. Lond., Feb. 1845, pp. 19, 20. (Larva, nymph, imago.) 

 F. Smith.— In ' The Zoologist,' No. xxiii., Sept. 1845, p. 1092-93. (Larva of Stylops.) 



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