408 NOTE ON MKLOfi. 



AuT. XLII. — Note on Meloe, Sfc. By Edward Newman. 



1. A FEW days ago I had the pleasure of seeing a Meloe 

 emerge from the earth of a bank, near Charlton. The aperture 

 whence it issued was speedily filled by the loose crumbling soil. 

 I have before recorded several attempts I made to trace the 

 economy of Meloe. The only facts elicited were these: — the 

 female Meloe burrows in the earth, makes a large, nearly 

 circular, and smooth cell ; deposits therein a globular mass of 

 about a hundred elongate yellow eggs ; these are hatched in 

 about fourteen days, and become minute, elongate, hexapod, 

 active larvae ; but in every instance these died for want of 

 suitable nutriment. Mr. E. Doubleday contrived to keep some 

 of these alive for three weeks, feeding them with dead flies, on 

 the legs of which they fastened themselves. Neither Mr. Dou- 

 bleday nor myself ever detected the least difference between 

 these young larvae and the little animals often found on the 

 blossoms o{ Ranunctdus ficaria, and occasionally on the bodies 

 of several species of wild bees. The female Meloe invariably 

 died in the cell which she constructed. 



2. I am requested by the Rev. G. T. Rudd to state, that 

 Remus sericeus, mentioned at p. 347, in a notice of the Trans- 

 actions of the Entomological Society, was never taken by him 

 in Yorkshire, as had been stated by error in that work, but on 

 the sea shore at Ryde, in the Isle of Wight. In July and 

 August, 1836, it occurred in the latter locality in great plenty. 



3. The same gentleman has taken Phloeocharls suhtilissima 

 in woods, at Yarm, in Yorkshire ; he found it under the bark 

 of limbs of trees which had recently been lopped. 



4. In reply to Dr. Bevan's inquiry respecting the existence 

 of any bee which stores honey and yet does not sting, I beg to 

 offer the following note, which has long been in my hands, 

 but whence it is copied I know not : — " Great quantities of 

 wild honey are found in the woods, in the Isthmus of Panama, 

 the bees collecting which do not sting, and are thus robbed 

 without precaution." 



Edward Newman. 



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