of the Oil Beetle, Meloé. 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*. Meloé 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 Meloë. Geoffroyt, as: 
I have already shown, has stated, that the larva of Meloë resembles the perfect 
insect; that it is of the same colour, is fat, sluggish, has tbe 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 larvæ of Meloë 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 Meloé is correct. The larva 
of Meloé 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 setzeform an- 
tenne, and its elongated legs. 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 larve proved afterwards to be those of Cryptophagus cellaris, Payk.—See next memoir 
t Trans. Linn. Suc. vol. xiv. p. 316. ł Hist. Ins. tome i. p. 377 i 
$ Insect. fasc. 8. tab. 16; 1728? and as quoted in Swainson and Shuckard' ite 
; s * History and Nat 
Arrangement of Insects,’ Cabinet Cycloped. 1840, p. 328. z Sao 
