The Primary Larva of the Oil-Beetles 



Those which have thus giddily flung them- 

 selves upon a bit of straw and are allowed 

 to return to their flower do not readily fall 

 a second time into the same trap. There 

 is therefore, in these animated specks, a 

 memory, an experience of things. 



After these experiments I tried others with 

 hairy materials imitating more or less closely 

 the down of the Bees, with little pieces of 

 cloth or velvet cut from my clothes, with 

 plugs of cotton wool, with pellets of flock 

 gathered from the everlastings. Upon all 

 these objects, offered with the tweezers, the 

 Meloes flung themselves without any difli- 

 culty; but, instead of keeping quiet, as they 

 do on the bodies of the Bees, they soon con- 

 vinced me, by their restless behaviour, that 

 they found themselves as much out of their 

 element on these furry materials as on the 

 smooth surface of a bit of straw. I ought to 

 have expected this: had I not just seen them 

 wandering without pause upon the everlast- 

 ings enveloped with cottony flock? If 

 reaching the shelter of a downy surface were 

 enough to make them believe themselves safe 

 in harbour, nearly all would perish, without 

 further attempts, in the down of the plants. 



Let us now offer them live insects and, first 

 of all, Anthophorae. If the Bee, after we 



99 



