of the Oil Beetle, Meloé, and of the Strepsiptera. 349 
on its back *." The same gentleman remarks of another species, Halictopha- 
gus Curtisii, Dale, that it died on the evening of the day on which he captured 
itt; and Mr. Halliday states of another, Elenchus Walkeri, Curtis, that the 
only specimen he could * succeed in bringing home alive he put under a 
watch-glass, but having left it for an hour, found it dead, though placed in a 
cool spot T." 
It is thus evident that the life of the imago, in all the species, is a period of 
the most intense but brief excitement. When on the wing, Mr. Thwaites 
describes the Stylopes as “exceedingly graceful in their flight, taking long 
sweeps, as if carried along by a gentle breeze," usually flying high in the air, 
but “ occasionally hovering at a few inches distant from the ground $." Mr. 
Dale also says of the specimen captured by himself, that “it flew with an undu- 
latory and vacillating motion" amongst the young shoots of a quickset-hedge 
in his garden, and that he “could not catch it till it settled on one, when it 
ran up and down, its wings in motion, and making a considerable buzz or 
hum, nearly as loud as a Sesia||.” These are precisely the habits we might 
expect to find in an insect that required to seek the object of its solicitude on 
the wing. But, further than this, Mr. Dale saw another Stylops, confined 
under a glass in the sun, with a bee, Andrena labialis, from which it had 
recently been developed, mount on the body of the bee, and remain seated on 
it, while the latter was in motion, and using every effort to rid itself of the 
parasite. Further, Dr. Siebold more recently has seen a male of Xenos Rossii 
mount on the abdomen of a stylopized wasp (Pollistes gallica), and, agitating 
its wings rapidly, endeavour with much ardour to introduce the extremity of 
its body between the segments of the body of the wasp, which doubtless con- 
tained the female Xenos. | 
It is fair to infer, then, that this is the mode in which the apodal female 
Strepsiptera are impregnated while still within the bodies of other insects, as 
ato by Dr. Siebeld.; and that to this great intent of creation every rid 
arity of structure in the body of the male is to be referred ; thus apparently 
showing, uot only the dependence of function, but even also of special S 
sa cis ig è pea The great erunt of the organs of sense, 
m. fol. 226. T Loc. cit. fol. 433. 1 Loc. cit. fol. 385. 
$ Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. vol. iii. part 1. | Curtis's British Entom. fol. 296. 
| 222 
