XXX1X 
unfrequently happens that even the victor in this strife, finding 
the egg partially consumed by one of his former adversaries, and 
consequently insufficient for his maintenance, shares the fate of 
the vanquished ; but no such pugnacious dispositions are evinced 
at other times when consorting together in multitudes. Such 
contests are avoided in the cells of Anthophora, where a single 
Sitaris-larva obtains possession of the egg unmolested at the 
moment of oviposition on the honey itself—a circumstance upon 
which M. Fabre comments as a wonderful display of instinct on 
the part of these larve (I. c., p. 326). 
The secondary larva of Sitaris Colletes which plunges into the 
honey, continues to feed thereon until April or May of the 
following year. It is destitute of eyes or ocelli, but still retains 
the vestiges of legs, and is furnished with spoon-shaped mandibles, 
acting alternately in the feeding-process. Eight or ten days after 
ceasing to feed, the adult larva assumes the pseudo-chrysalis stage 
of corneous consistency, within the detached but still closely 
enveloping larval pellicle, which Fabre aptly compares to a bag of 
fine gauze. 
M. Valéry Mayet designates this stage as the “ pseudo-nymphe”’ 
—an appellation which he incorrectly attributes to Newport; for 
the latter, in his several memoirs on the transformations of Meloé 
(Linn. Trans., vols. xx., xxi.), always speaks of the “adult or 
pseudo-larva,’—referred to in his last memoir as the only inter- 
mediate stage in which he had found this insect (1. ¢., p. 177),— 
for which stage M. Fabre has substituted the more appropriate 
denomination of “ pseudo-chrysalide” (p. 356), as not giving birth 
at once to the imago form, but evolving, within the indurated 
tegument, a semi-active larval form, followed by an ecdysis of the 
latter preparatory to assuming the condition of a true pupa or 
nymph (p. 338). Neither he nor Newport ever allude to a pseudo- 
pupa or pseudo-nymph, applicable rather to the aforesaid semi- 
active stage, which Fabre was the first to notice, and which, from 
its close resemblance to the antecedent larva, he designates as 
la troisiéme larve.” 
The pseudo-chrysalis of Sitaris Colletes exhibits this interior 
metamorphosis—as seen through the semi-transparent corneous 
tecument—after about ten weeks, towards the end of July or 
the middle of August; the perfect beetle emerging usually the 
following month; although in some rare instances—attributable, 
