152 



COLEOPTERA. 



be, the history of the parasitic Stylops is most curious. 

 The male, which is very unlike the female, is rather a 

 pretty little insect, having a posterior pair of large 

 membranous wings, which can fold up like a fan ; the 

 front-wings are rudimentary, forming a pair of slender- 

 twisted appendages (hence the term Siepsiptera), sup- 

 posed to represent aborted wing-cases. The insects are 



seldom more than a 

 sixth - of - an - inch 

 long. The female 

 is an oblong sac 

 without legs or 

 wings; the head and 

 thorax is fused into 

 a single flattened 

 mass, the abdomen 

 is of great size, re- 

 minding one of that 



Stylops (natural size and magnified). 01 the White ant ; 



it is the female which is parasitic upon various species 

 of wild-bees, the bodies of which it never leaves. It 

 buries itself up to its head in the body of the bee, 

 between the abdominal segments, with the hinder part 

 protruded, in which position it is visited by the male 

 Stylops. As many as 200 or 300 of these female para- 

 sites have been found in a single bee. The female is 

 ovoviviparous, the larvae are hatched within the body of 

 the mother ; on leaving which they appear as little 

 active six-footed creatures, which were once supposed to 

 stand in the relation, not of children to parent, but as 

 parasites on' the Stylops parasite. After the larvae are 

 born they attach themselves to the hairs of the body of 



