The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles 



In summing up the above, we see that the 

 strange Httle creature awaits, without food, 

 for seven months, the appearance of the 

 Anthophorae and at last fastens on to the 

 hairs on the corselet of the males, who are 

 the first to emerge and who inevitably pass 

 within its reach in going through their cor- 

 ridors. From the fleece of the male the 

 larva moves, three or four weeks later, to 

 that of the female, at the moment of 

 coupling; and then from the female to the 

 egg leaving the oviduct. It is by this con- 

 catenation of complex manoeuvres that the 

 larva in the end finds itself perched upon an 

 egg in the middle of a closed cell filled with 

 honey. These perilous gymnastics on the 

 hair of a Bee in movement all the day, this 

 passing from one sex to the other, this ar- 

 rival in the middle of the cell by way of the 

 egg, a dangerous bridge thrown across the 

 sticky abyss, all this necessitates the balancing- 

 appliances with which it is provided and 

 which I have described above. Lastly, the 

 destruction of the egg calls, in its turn, for a 

 sharp pair of scissors; and such is the object 

 of the keen, curved mandibles. Thus the 

 primary form of the Sitares has as its func- 

 tion to get itself carried by the Anthophora 

 into the cell and to rip up her egg. This 

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