MELOID^. 



479 



tion this stage in its development. In this stage the larva is 

 said to be motionless ; the head is mask-like, without movable 

 appendages, and the feet are represented by six tubercles. 

 This is, properly speaking, the "semipupa." This 

 form, however, according to Fabre, changes its skin 

 and turns into a third larval form (Fig. 450). After 

 some time it assumes its true pupa form (Fig. 451) 

 and finally moults this skin to appear as a beetle. 



In Horia and allies the head is large, square behind, '^' 

 and the front is not prolonged beyond the base of the antennae. 

 Horia sanguinipennis Say is now placed by Leconte in the 

 genus Tricrania, which differs in the last joint of 

 the maxillary palpi being longer than the third, and 

 by the triangular head. It is found in the nest of 

 the humble bee, and in the "West Indies a species 

 of Iloria is found in the nests of Xylocopa teredo, a 

 species of carpenter bee. 



Sitaris^ an European genus, has much the same 

 habits as Meloe. Its eggs are laid near the entrance 

 of bees' nests, and at the very moment, according 

 to Fabre, that the bee lays her egg in the honc}- 

 cell, the flattened, oval, Sitaris larva drops from 

 the body of the bee upon the egg and feasts upon 

 its contents. It then feeds on the honey in the 

 cell of the bee and changes into a white, cylindri- 

 cal, nearly footless grub, and after it becomes full- 

 fed, and has assumed the supi^osed "pupa'' 

 state, the skin, without bursting, encloses a kind 

 of hard "pupa" skin which is very 

 similar in outline to the former larva, rig. 45i. ~ 

 and within this skin is found a whitish larva, which 

 directly changes into the true pupa. These 

 changes M. Fabre calls a " h3'permetamorphosis," 

 but it will probably be found that the two so- 

 called "pupa" states, immediately preceding the 

 final genuine pupa state he describes, are but 

 changes of the semipupa, and can be paralleled in some de- 

 gree by the remarkable changes of the bee and moth noted 

 by us previously. 



Fig. 4.5-2, 



