170 BRITISH BEETLES. 



to the many fortunate contingencies required before the 

 larvae can be safely landed within reach of their food, 

 that causes such an enormous number of eggs to be laid 

 by the parent beetle. As it is, all the perfect insects of 

 this genus, seen by one observer in his lifetime, would 

 bear a ridiculously small proportion to the number of 

 eggs laid by one specimen. 



When carried by the unconscious bee to its nest, the 

 Meloe larva devours the egg therein contained, changes 

 (without leaving the shell of the latter) into a second 

 form, not unlike the larva of a Lamellicorn beetle in 

 miniature, being arched, cylindrical, with toothed man- 

 dibles and stout legs, and then subsists on the food 

 intended by the bee for its own young. After some 

 time this second form of the larva changes its outer 

 covering, which is not entirely shed, but remains 

 wrinkled together at the hinder apex of its body : it 

 is then arched, distinctly composed of 13 segments, 

 attenuated at the extremities, and motionless. From 

 this false pupa (and probably after passing the winter) 

 a third form of the larva appears, similar to the second ; 

 but from this point it is only by analogy with the trans- 

 formations of Sitaris muralis, an allied insect (Plate 

 XI, Fig. 1), that we can form an idea of its final meta- 

 morphosis. 



The latter insect (which has large wings) is in its 

 earlier ages, and indeed during all its life, a parasite 

 upon certain mason bees of the genus Anthophora, com- 

 mon in old walls near London (the Rev. A. Badger 

 having taken the first British specimen of the beetle 

 at Chelsea). In this species the larva undergoes less 

 vicissitudes than in Meloe, as the eggs (two or three 

 thousand at a time) are deposited by the female at the 



