of the Oil Beetle, Meloé, and of the Strepsiptera. 331 
of the giants of the species, Stylops Spencit, is scarcely one-fourth of an inch in 
length ; while the pigmy genus, Elenchus, is scarcely more than one-fourth even 
of this dimension. But size in the material world, like space or time in the 
ethereal or immaterial, is merely a relative condition, and is of little moment 
to the philosophical inquirer, while engaged in investigating the laws by which 
the Deity has ordained the development of structure,—the evocation of life,— 
or the evolution of function and instinct. The organization and habits of the 
tiny Stylops are as much proper subjects of investigation, of wonder and 
admiration, to the right-thinking mind, as are those of the Leviathan of the 
deep, or of the Elephant of the forest; whilst their very diminutiveness and 
isolation, like all microscopic analyses of organism, or singleness of action, 
tend greatly to facilitate our investigation of principles, and lead us more 
easily to understand those on which structure is formed, and function and 
instinct are unfolded. 
Like the Meloés, the Strepsiptera are parasites on the Aculeata, the sand- 
wasps, wasps and bees, which nidificate in banks of dry earth or sand exposed 
to the sun; localities as essential to the development of the parasites them- 
selves as to that of the species which they infest. 
The first discovered of these singular insects, the Xenos vesparum of Rossi, 
was regarded by him as constituting a new genus of Hymenoptera allied to 
Ichneumon, Another species was discovered soon afterwards by our country- 
man the Rev. William Kirby, who at once perceived, without being aware of 
Rossi's discovery, that his insect, a new species, belonged not only to a new 
genus, which he designated, from the form of its eyes and the bee it was 
found on, Stylops Melitte, but that it constituted the type even of a new 
Order of Insects. When a second species of Xenos, X. Peckii, was discovered 
some time afterwards by Professor Peck of Boston, and communicated to 
Mr. Kirby, this gentleman then formed the species into an Order, which he 
Lewis.—In ditto, p. 305. part xiv., Nov. 1839, new species? Van Diemen’s Land. 
Templeton.—Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. vol. iii. part 1. p. 51, 1838-1841. (Xenos Westwoodii.) 
Siebold —Wiegmann’s Archiv, 1843. (Metamorphosis of Strepsiptera, larva, nymph, imago.) 
Guerin.—Revue Zoologique (abstract of the preceding, with notes), March 1844, p. 111—118. 
Newport.— Anniversary Address Ent. Soc. Lond., Feb. 1845, pp. 19, 20. (Larva, nymph, imago ) 
F. Smith.—In * The Zoologist,’ No. xxiii, Sept. 1845, p. 1092-93. (Larve of Stylops ) = 
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