PACKARD. — INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS. 351 



IV. HOMOCHRONOUS HEREDITY IN INSECTS WITH A HTPER- 



METAMORPHOSIS. 



The hypermetamorphoses of the Meloidos. Rhipiphoridse, and Stylo- 

 pidne very strikingly illustrate the principle we are endeavoring to 

 emphasize and establish. The facts are given in the writings of New- 

 port, Fabre, Westwood, Siebold, Valery-Mayet, Riley, and others. 



In Meloe' the freshly hatched larva, or " triungulin." is an active 

 Campodea-like larva, which runs about and climbs up flowers, from 

 which it creeps upon the body of bees, such as Anthophora, who 

 carries it to her cells, wherein her eggs are situated. The triungulin 

 feeds upon and destroys the eggs of its hostess. Meanwhile its in- 

 active life in the bee's cell reacts upon the organism ; after moulting, 

 the second larval form is attained, and now the body is thick, cylin- 

 drical, soft, and fleshy, and it resembles a lamellicorn larva, with three 

 pairs of rather long thoracic legs. This second larva feeds upon the 

 honey stored up for the young or larval bees. After another moult, 

 there is another entire change in the body; it is motionless, the head 

 is mask-like without movable appendages, and the feet are represented 

 by six tubercles. This is called the semi-pupa or pseudo-pupal stage. 

 This form moults, and changes to a third larval form, when apparently, 

 as the result of its rich concentrated food, it is overgrown, thick-bodied, 

 without legs, and resembles a larval bee. 



After thus passing through three larval stages, each remarkably 

 different in structure and in the manner of taking food, it transforms 

 into a pupa of the ordinary coleopterous shape. 



The history of Sitaris, as worked out by Fabre and more recently 

 by Valery-Mayet, is a similar story of two strikingly different adapta- 

 tional larval forms succeeding the triungulin or primitive larval stage. 

 The first larva is in general like that of Meloe, the second is thick, 

 oval, fleshy, soft-bodied, and with minute legs, evidently of no use, the 

 larva feeding on the honey stored by its host. The pseudo-pupal stage 

 is still more maggot-like than in the corresponding stage of Meloe, 

 and the third larva is thick-bodied, with short thoracic legs. 



In the complicated life history of another Cantharid, Epicauta vit- 

 tr/ta, as worked out by Dr. C. V. Riley, we have the same acquisition 

 of new habits and forms after the first larval stage, which evidently 

 were at the outset the result of an adaptation to a change of food and 

 surrroundings. The female Epicauta lays its eggs in the same warm, 

 sunny situation as that chosen by locusts (Caloptenus) for depositing 

 their eggs. On hatching, the active minute carnivorous triungulin, 



