164 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
have been closely followed up from early morn to “ dewy 
eve,” and recorded with a precision rarely, if ever, surpassed ; 
thus affording an admirable illustration how time may be 
stolen, as it were, for such objects, from other vocations, by 
activity and perseverance. 
An interesting account of the habits and metamorphoses 
of a new species of Sitaris (S. Colletes), parasitic, as its 
name implies, on a species of Colletes (C. succincta, L.), 
has been given by M. Valéry Mayet in the ‘Annales’ of 
the French Entomological Society (Ser. 5, tome v., 1875), 
with two plates exhibiting the various stages of both 
these insects, from larva to imago; and of Epeolus 
tristis, Sim., obtained from the cells of this Colletes. 
The primitive larva of the aforesaid Sitaris, as carefully 
described and delineated in this memoir, is furnished with 
triunguiculate tarsal claws, like that of Meloé; whereas, in 
M. Fabre’s remarkable life-history of Sitaris humeralis, the 
tarsi of the latter, in this stage, are represented as terminating 
in a single powerful claw (un ongle puissant, long, aigu, et 
tres mobile). The young larva of 8. Colletes is supplied 
with a caudal apparatus (appareil fixateur, V.M.), consisting 
of two upcurved spiked appendages attached to the base of 
the eighth abdominal segment on the dorsal region, having 
a simultaneous action up and down, between which are two 
tubular processes emanating from a superincumbent plate, 
and directed backwards, from whence filaments issue from 
time to time when the larva desires to affix itself to a hair of 
the bee or other object. Fabre, however, appears to consider 
such filaments, in the larva of S. humeralis, as ordinary 
caudal sete, which he describes as attached to the exterior 
margin of the ninth abdominal segment (/.¢., p. 810). The 
Colletes-egg is readily accessible to the young Sitaris, not 
being deposited by the bee, as in the cells of Anthophora, 
upon the honey-store itself, but affixed above this to the wall 
of the cell, whereby the difficulty and danger to be incurred 
in reaching the same, and the necessity of effecting this 
mancuvre at the moment of oviposition, are avoided. As 
this Colletes construcis her cells and deposits her eggs in the 
autumn, the Sitaris-larve, soon after their birth, attach them- 
selves to their victims, instead of remaining, like those of 
S. humeralis, seven months fasting in suspense, from the end 
