of the Oil Beetle, Meloe, and of the Strepsiptera. 351 



examination of near objects, tiie function specially required for the peculiar 

 habits of the animal. 



When located in the cell, which the careful parent-bee closes in to protect 

 her young, — unconscious of the danger she has herself introduced, — the para- 

 sites, Meloe and Stylops, are very similar in their earlier changes and habits. 

 The Stylops, as we have seen, penetrates into the body of the bee-larva, feeds 

 on its substance, loses its organs of locomotion, then become utterly useless to 

 it, and there undergoes its transformations. The. Meloe, I have now reason to 

 believe, also attacks the larva, while its organs of locomotion, as in Stylops, 

 gradually become atrophied, and towards the end of its larva-state (Tab. XIV. 

 figs. 15, 16) preparatory to its assuming the condition of a nymph (figs. 17, 18), 

 have almost disappeared, being then reduced to simple tubercles. But here 

 the analogies between Stylops and Meloe cease. Tlie organization and habits 

 of the latter, in its perfect state, are widely different from those of the former. 

 The changes which the structures in the larva of Meloe undergo are in some 

 parts carried to a greater extent than in corresponding parts of Stylops, and 

 to a less in others, and the habits of the perfect insect as a consequence are 

 different. From a parasitical (figs. 4, 5) the Meloe becomes a vegetable feeder 

 (figs. 1,2). The structure of the organs of nutrition are gradually altered in 

 form during the growth of the larva (figs. 8, 10c, 11); and when this has changed 

 to the nymph, and afterwards to the imago state, the parts of its mouth are then 

 adapted only for the prehension and comminution of vegetable food. 



In my former memoir, some observations on a larva (fig. 34, u) that seemed 

 to be the middle stage of growth of that of Meloe, and which also I had found 

 in the' nest of Anthophora (fig. 19), led me then to the conclusion that the 

 young Meloe fed only on the food stored up for the bee-larva, and conse- 

 quently, that its parasitism was on vegetable and not on animal matter*. 



* Note on Cryptophagus cellaris. (Read April 6th, 1847.) 



la my first memoir on Meloe, read to the Linnean Society on the 18th of November 1845, I men- 

 tioned a larva of some coleopterous insect of which I had found three specimens, in a cell that inclosed 

 also a nymph of Anthophora, amidst others in the same bank of earth from which I obtained the full- 

 grown larvje of Meloe cicatricosus . The general appearance of this larva induced me then to think it 

 highly probable that this was the young of Meloe, in a stage of growth more advanced than that in 

 which Meloe is found parasitic on the winged insect ; and that, from some cause or other, — deficiency 

 of food, or lateness of period at which they were conveyed to the cell, — these specimens had not acquired 



