of the Oil Beetle, Melo'd. 319 



been regarded as a singular anomaly in the supposed parasitic habits of the 

 insect, and show that, although it resides as a parasite in the nest of another 

 insect, its food is constantly of a vegetable nature*. Meloe cicatricosus is 

 most certainly parasitic in the nest of Anthophora retusa ; as the Rev. Lans- 

 down Guildingt has already shown that the larva of another genus, Horia 

 maculata, is on the carpenter-bee of the West Indies, Xylocopa Teredo. 



I have now only to show the remaining states of Meloe. GeofFroy;}:, as 

 I have already shown, has stated, that the larva of Meloe resembles the perfect 

 insect ; that it is of the same colour, is fat, sluggish, has the head scaly, and 

 the rest of the body soft, and that it is buried in the earth, where it undergoes 

 its metamorphoses. This description of the larva so little agrees with the 

 specimens I have obtained, and know to be the larvse of Meloe cicatricosus, 

 that I am satisfied GeofFroy must have confounded this with some other 

 species, Frisch§ was better informed. He represents the larva as under- 

 going " several changes of skin, in the last of which it acquires its wing- 

 shaped cases." He also states, " that it remains during the winter in clayey 

 earth, where no humidity can reach it, and that it comes forth in the month 

 of May." This account of the latter changes of Meloe is correct. The larva 

 of Meloe cicatricosus certainly undergoes several changes of skin, in the last 

 of which, previously to entering the nymph state, it is a thick, fat, heavy, 

 inanimate, and almost completely apodal maggot, of a light orange colour, 

 pent up in its cell in the dry bank of clay or sand amongst the nests of Antho- 

 phora. It has entirely thrown off its caudal appendages, its setseform an- 

 tennae, and its elongated \egs. In place of the latter it retains only six short 

 tubercles on the under surface of the anterior segments. I have found it in 

 this state in considerable numbers in the clay-bank at Richborough, in the 

 months of August and September, in the years 1832, 1834, 1842, and during 

 the present autumn. It is always concealed in a closed cell, in those parts of 

 the bank in which the bees' nests are most numerous and crowded together. 

 Although its cell is nearly of the same size as that of Anthophora, and seems 

 to have been originally formed by that insect, it is not then a smooth oval 



* These larvse proved afterwards to be those of Cryptopliagus cellar is, Payk. — See next memoir. 

 t Trans. Linn. Soc. vol. xiv. p. 316. 1 Hist. Ins. tome i. p. 377. 



§ Insect, fasc. 8. tab. 16 ; 1728 ? and as quoted in Swainson and Shuckard's ' History and Natural 

 Arrangement of Insects,' Cabinet Cyclopsed. 1840, p. 328. 



