rAl *P gta? o 
438 Mr. C. O. Fardfrarson’s Five Years’ Observations 
parasite. This was the doubtful piece de résistance of last 
mail. The bristly larvae after a time emerge from the 
empty snail shell, minus bristles of any sort. They are like 
a large rather soft-skinned larva [the apterous 92], very 
bloated in appearance, with curious short antennae and a 
more curious appendage at the posterior end. One of them 
one day oviposited a mass of sticky yellow eggs and died. 
The eggs are sulphur yellow when fresh. They are un- 
doubtedly eggs and the larya [Q|—a large thing over an 
inch in length and nearly half an inch broad—is absolutely 
apterous. But Pve seen no males, and I think the oviposi- 
tion may be parthenogenetic. I have them in a flower-pot 
covered over with mosquito gauze. The worst of it is they 
won't feed. Another has oviposited and died, and I have 
failed to get the eggs to develop, owing to mould or want 
of fertilisation. From the first box in which IT had them 
it is possible that a smaller winged male might have escaped. 
It was not protected by gauze, and the wooden box warped. 
However, I am in hopes that ['ll manage to complete the 
cycle. Material in the form of the bristly larva is plentiful. 
I wonder if you could let me know what sort of a creature 
the Drilid Selasia unicolor is which Lamborn bred (by 
accident) from a large snail. It was before I met him last 
tour. I think if it had been this extraordinary apterous 
creature he would have told me of it. Only he told me 
so much that I may have forgotten. 
[Lamborn bred a female Drilid, evidently the same form 
as Farquharson’s, from a larva to which a snail was given, 
in mid-June, 1913. The larva-like female emerged July 31, 
and was determined as probably S. wnicolor by Dr. Marshall, 
and the snails on which it feeds as Limicolaria sp. ] 
Nov. 24, 1915.—I got off a specimen of the snail-parasite, 
larva and mature 9, with a fewova. The latter are sulphur- 
yellow when fresh. 
[In later letters he spoke of his hope to breed the male 
beetle, and, on April 28, 1918, of noticing numbers of the 
larvae. The last reference, shortly before he sailed from 
Lagos, is as follows :—] 
Aug. 11, 1918.—Looking back over the 22 months, it 
is very little that I have been able to do. I had hoped to 
clear up the Decatoma life-history, the snail-parasite, and I 
don’t know how many other things, but at any rate I’ve 
got clues to work on, and, if I do not get the chance, perhaps 
somebody else will. 
