The Primary Larva of the Oil-Beetles 



their tiny grub, when it leaves the egg, has 

 itself carried into the cell by the Bee whose 

 victuals are to form its food. 



Observed in the down of various Bees, the 

 queer little creature for a long time baffled 

 the sagacity of the naturalists, who, mistaking 

 its true origin, made it a species of a special 

 family of wingless insects. It was the Bee- 

 louse {Pediculis apis) of Linnaeus; ! the Tri- 

 ungulin of the Andrenae {Triungulinus An- 

 drenetarum) of Leon Dufour. They saw 

 in it a parasite, a sort of Louse, living in the 

 fleece of the honey-gatherers. It was re- 

 served for the distinguished English na- 

 turalist Newport to show that this supposed 

 Louse was the first state of the Oil-beetles. 

 Some observations of my own will fill a few 

 lacunae in the English scientist's monograph. 

 I will therefore sketch the evolution of the 

 Oil-beetles, using Newport's work where my 

 own observations are defective. In this way 

 the Sitares and the Meloes, alike in habits 

 and transformations, will be compared; and 

 the comparison will throw a certain light 

 upon the strange metamorphoses of these 

 insects. 



1 Carolus Linnaeus (Karl von Linne, 1707-1778), the cel- 

 ebrated Swedish botanist and naturalist, founder of the 

 Linnxan system of classification. — Translator's Note. 



85 



