86 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



beetle ; and here it exhibits an important phase in 

 the changes of form through which its development 

 is carried out. The honey-store now begins to be 

 uti-lised by this insect- thief. The beetle becomes, in 

 virtue of its feeding, a fleshy, grub-like creature, which 

 floats helplessly on the honey. Its mouth is buried 

 in the sweet store, and the beetle, as M. Fabre remarks, 

 seems to exist at the very verge of suffocation, 



Bit by bit the honey is consumed. It is the nutri- 

 ment out of which the young beetle is forming and 

 developing its future adult organisation. A few more 

 changes of form occur, and a few moults evince the 

 rapidity of its growth. Finally, in the month of 

 August, comes forth the perfect Sitaris beetle, which, 

 laying its eggs at the doors of the bees in the suc- 

 ceeding autumn, will cause its progeny to repeat the 

 eventful history through which itself attained the 

 fulness of life. 



That these foregoing events constitute a very 

 remarkable history is, I think, a fair description of 

 their nature and purport. In its way, the record of 

 the Sitaris development is more wonderful, one might 

 hold, than the habits of the ants in respect of their 

 entertaining stranger-insects, for example. Thus we 

 find certain ants keeping the eggs of the aphides or 

 plant-lice, so common on all plants, during the winter 

 in their nests ; the ants, as Sir John Lubbock tells 

 us, treating (t these eggs as if they were their own, 

 guarding and tending them with the utmost care." 



In the case of our beetle, we see a far more complex 

 habit wrought out to become part and parcel of the 

 animal's development. What, at first, must have 

 been a chance discovery that of the honey-store of 

 the bee must have been subsequently complicated 



