GAD FLIES. 125 
Chrysops are stated also to live in earth. So far as they are described, 
the Tabanus grubs, are cylindrical, somewhat largest about the middle, 
and they turn to the pupal condition not within the maggot-skin, but 
free, something in the manner of the Daddy Longlegs, or Tipula larve. 
In the ‘Classification of Insects,’ by the late Prof. Westwood, 
Life-President of our Entomological Society, he remarks: ‘‘ We are 
indebted to De Geer for the knowledge we possess of the transforma- 
tions of this family’’; and as still up to the present time De Geer’s 
account of his own personal observations of the changes of the 7’. 
bovinus, Linn., from larval state up to the perfect insect continues to 
be the chief source of information on the subject, and cannot be sur- 
passed in accuracy or excellence of description, I give the main points 
in my own translation from his ‘ Mémoires,’ believing that the history 
of the changes, told almost in his own words, will be much more use- 
fully interesting than a mere abstract of the scientific points to be 
’ deduced from them.* 
M. De Geer, after remarking that the larve of the Tabanide (of 
which no author had spoken before himself) live in the ground, 
observes :— 
‘*T have found many in the month of May whilst searching in the 
earth of a meadow, and having shut up seven or eight in a box filled 
with fresh earth, which I was careful to renew from time to time, I 
observed on the 12th of June, 1760, that one of these larve had taken 
the form of a nymph” [what at the present day we call a chrysalis or 
pupa, E. A. O.], ‘‘and that it had half come out of the earth, keeping 
the head and fore part of the body out of tlie earth, whilst the rest was 
buried in it. 
‘‘T searched the earth in the box to find the other larve, but there 
were only three remaining, without counting that which had changed, 
and these three larve assumed afterward similarly the form of 
‘nymphs,’—similarly coming half out of the earth. . . . I found 
there also one small dead larva, and as the other latve which had 
disappeared could not have got out of the box, there is every appearance 
that they had been devoured by those which arrived at transformation. 
‘The largest larva which I have had of this kind was nearly an 
inch and a half long when extended as much as possible, and two lines 
and a half in breadth at the middle of the body. It much resembles 
those of the large Tipule’’ [what we know popularly as Crane Flies, 
or Daddy Longlegs, E. A. O.] ‘‘ which live in the earth. 
«Tt is cylindrical, of nearly equal thickness throughout, but lesser 
towards the head, so that the anterior portion is conical and pointed, 
* See ‘Mémoires pour servir 4 l’histoire des Insectes,’ par M. le Baron Charles 
De Geer, p. 214. Tome sixiéme, Stockholm, 1776. 
