322 Mr. Newport on the Natural History 
out the organized world; and it is especially marked in the whole of the 
hexapod Articulata. I shall attempt to exemplify its prevalence, and to 
show the connexion of particular instincts with peculiarities of structure, by 
comparing the general anatomy of the Meloés with the facts of their natural 
history, and these with corresponding facts of structure and habit in other 
insects. 
In this way applied, the truths of natural history may be rendered invaluable 
to science, as data on which a correet knowledge of the laws of creation and 
life may be established. I would thus attempt to bring our acquaintance 
with the habits of species, when compared with their organization, to help us 
to understand the nature of Instinct; as I have heretofore* endeavoured to 
apply the laws of physiology to aid us in understanding the comparative 
anatomy of the nervous system of the Articulata, and, through this, to assist 
in explaining that of our own bodies. Natural history, which has often been 
regarded as little other than merely a pleasing pursuit, may thus be made to 
occupy its proper position as an important branch of useful knowledge, and. 
mainly help to demonstrate the connexion which subsists between structure 
and function, and function and the instincts of animals. 
Or THE Larva. 
We have seen in the former memoir that the larvee of the Meloés are active 
little hexapods, of very diminutive size, and that they attach themselves para- 
sitically to the bodies of other insects, chiefly Hymenoptera. This remarkable 
fact in the economy of the tribe is one of the greatest importance, not only 
with reference to the development of these insects, but also to that of the 
whole of the Articulata, in connexion with the general laws of organization ; 
since there are still naturalists who cling to the opinion, that the diminutive 
hexapods found on the bodies of the Hymenoptera are not the young of Meloé, 
but are adult parasitic forms. Leon Dufour, as we have seen, in 1828, even 
described them as a distinct genus, by the name of Triungulinus, and arranged 
them with the Pediculit. Mr. Westwood 1, ten years afterwards, adopted the 
same view, which he has not hitherto repudiated ; and the same has again 
: * Phil. Trans. 1832, 1834,1843. Todd’s Cyclop. Anatom. and Physiology, Art. ** INsEcTA," 1839, 
T Annales des Scien. Nat. 1828. - 1 Introduction, &c. vol. i. 1839, p. 303. 
