Stylopidce. 3 



Thus, the general principles laid down by him in cer- 

 tain rules and formularies as justifying- the separation of 

 these insects from other Orders (I) are inapplicable, or 

 have rather an opposite tendency, more especially when, 

 even in the absence of all information as to their primary 

 affinities, Kirby already considered their " metamorphosis 

 nearer to that of Coleoptera" than to that of any other 

 " elytropliorous order " (vi) . 



All the arguments which have been suggested in oppo- 

 sition to such an alliance appear to me to have been already 

 triumphantly refuted by Dr. Schaum, as set forth mi extenso 

 by Lacordaire in his carefully collected details upon this 

 subject (?i) ; nor indeed can it be conceived that these 

 primary larv», of assimilated forms, should belong to 

 different orders, or expected that (in the great strviggle 

 of life, wherein structural characters assume various de- 

 grees of development, or become altogether rudimentary, 

 in accordance with functional discipline) they should be 

 endowed with the self-same buccal organs, notwithstand- 

 ing the differences of their respective habits ; whether de- 

 stined to penetrate into the bodies of their larval victims in 

 the first instance, and afterwards to become external feeders 

 thereon, as in Rhipiphorus (o); or to remain compara- 

 tively innocuous as internal dependents upon their fostei'- 

 parents, as in Stylops and its allies; or whether, abjuring 

 the habits of either as alike uncongenial, they are addicted 

 to feed upon the egg of their victims in the first stage of 

 their existence, in order to monopolize the honey-store 

 of the former in the second stage, as in Meloe and 

 8ita7'is (p) . 



Moreover these organs are found to vary in the same 

 identical species at different periods, accoi'ding to the 

 respective requirements of larval development. Thus, in 

 M. Fabre's most interesting and elaborate memoir on the 



(I) Ibidem, pp. 94, 95. 



(w) Ibidem, p. 108. 



(ri) Lacordaire, Genera des Coleopteres, 1859, Vol. V. (part 2) p. 6-1.1. 

 Schaum, Wiegm. Archiv. 1851, II. p. 200. Siebold, Stettiu Entom. Zeit. 

 1853, p. 133, idem (Abstr.) Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., ser. 2, Vol. II. (Proc.) 

 p. 124. 



(o) Dr. T. Algernon Ghapman, Ann. and Mag. of Natural History, 

 4th series. Vol. Vl. London, Oct. 1870. 



(p) Fabre, "Memoire sur I'Hypermetamorphose et les mcEurs des Me- 

 loides," in Ann. des Sci. Nat. 4e Se'r. Zool. Vol. VII. p. 299, Paris, 1857. 



