Beetles 291 



vealing much of a change in the larva, although it is now more curved, less 

 active, and somewhat like a small June-beetle grub; after a third moult it is 

 still more helpless and grub-like. It now grows rapidly. When full-grown 

 it leaves the ruined egg-pod, makes a little cell in the ground near by in 

 which it lies motionless except for a gradual contracting and slow fourth 

 moulting, after which it appears as a completely helpless semi-pupa, or 

 coarctate larva. In this state it passes the winter. In spring the fifth 

 moult takes place, leaving the larva much as before, only smaller and 

 whiter. It becomes now rather active and burrows about, but takes no 

 food, and after a few days again moults for the si.xth time, to appear at last 

 as a true pupa. Five or six days later the adult beetle emerges. 



Those blister-beetles which live parasitically on bees' eggs instead of on 

 those of the locust probably follow about the course described by Fabre 

 for Sitaris humeralis, a European species, an account cf which I quote 

 from Sharp (Cambridge Natural History, vol. vi): "The eggs of the Sitaris 

 are deposited in the earth in close proximity to the entrances to the bees' 

 nests, about August. They are very numerous, a single female producing, 

 it is believed, upward of two thousand eggs. In about a month — towards 

 the end of September — they hatch, producing a tiny triungulin of black 

 color; the larvie do not, however, move away, but, without taking any food, 

 hibernate in a heap, remaining in this state till the following April or May, 

 when they become active. Although they are close to the abodes of the 

 bees, they do not enter them, but seek to attach themselves to any hairy object 

 that may come near them, and thus a certain number of them get on to the 

 bodies of the Anthophora [the bees] and are carried to its nest. They 

 attach themselves with equal readiness to any other hairy insect, and it is 

 probable that very large numbers perish in consequence of attaching them- 

 selves to the wrong insects. The bee in question is a species that nests in 

 the ground and forms cells, in each of which it places honey and lays an 

 egg, finally closing the receptacle. It is worthy of remark that in the case 

 of the Anthophora observed by M. Fabre the male appears about a month 

 before the female, and it is probable that the vast majority of the predatory 

 larvie attach themselves to the male, but afterwards seize a favorable oppor- 

 tunity, transfer themselves to the female, and so get carried to the cells of 

 the bee. When she deposits an egg on the honey, the triungulin glides from 

 the body of the bee on to the egg, and remains perched thereon as on a raft, 

 floating on the honey, and is then shut in by the bee closing the cell. This 

 remarkable act of slipping on to the egg cannot be actually witnessed, but 

 the e.xperiments and observations of the French naturalist leave Httle room 

 for doubt as to the matter really happening in the way described. The egg 

 of the bee forms the first nutriment of the tiny triungulin, which spends 

 about eight days in consuming its contents; never quitting it, because con- 



