326 Mr. Newport on the Natural History 
whether they belong to some other allied genus, remains for future investi- 
gation. I have no doubt that the whole of the hitherto-described yellow spe- 
cimens found on Hymenoptera and Diptera are the young of true Meloés. 
The different species of Meloé probably are peculiar to distinct species of 
Hymenoptera ; as it will be remembered that, in the experiments detailed in 
my former memoir*, I could not succeed in rearing the larvee of Meloé pro- 
scarabeus or Meloé violaceus in the nests of Anthophora retusa, although I 
obtained numerous full-grown larvee, nymphs and imagos of Meloé cicatri- 
cosus from the nests of Anthophora in its natural haunts. 
Since the reading of that memoir, Mr. Smith has obtained a specimen of 
Meloé abdominalis, Kirby, MSS.T, in the immature imago state, from the nest of 
Saropoda or of Colletes, in a bank thickly crowded with the nidi of these bees. 
The specimen had very recently changed from the nymph to the imago, and 
was still almost colourless, soft, and exceedingly delicate. In the course of a 
few weeks it gradually acquired the natural intense blue-black hue of the spe- 
cies, and its teguments became hardened. In the month of March it was 
capable of locomotion, and moved about vigorously. It was a male indivi- 
dual, and is now in Mr. Smith's cabinet. 
Thus then there is good reason to believe that all the Meloés are parasitic 
on the Hymenoptera. The genera allied to them appear also to have similar 
habits. M. Gondot found both sexes of Tetraonyx flavipennis, a species 
recently described by M. Guerin Meneville, in coitu, crawling slowly on the 
ground, near large stones, in the temperate region of the Cordilleras in 
Columbia, in places frequented by Bombi, in the nests of which he believes 
the larvae of Tetraonyx reside. Mylabris, according to Dr. Gebler$, depo- 
sits its eggs in the earth in the western parts of Siberia, on the borders of 
Tartary, where scarcely any trees, and very few shrubs exist. The larve, 
* Pages 315, 316. 
T On examining Mr. Kirby's specimens in the Cabinet of the Entomological Society, both Mr. Smith 
and myself are of opinion that the two specimens under this name are only very diminutive varieties of 
M. proscarabeus. 
1 Magazin de Zool. 1844, Ins. tab. 141. 
§ Des Mylabrides de la Sibérie occidentale des confins de la Tartarie; Nouv. Mém. de la Soc. Imp. 
des Nat. de Moscou, tome vii. 1829. 
