184 Prof. J. C. Schiodte on the Classification 



manner, spreading out a pair of pointed hooks now in one 

 direction and then in another ! 



Nevertheless it is but justice to these observers to say that, 

 had they not gone to their task with their eyes blinded by 

 prejudice, they would not have imagined they saw what they 

 never really did see, nor have taken refuge in interpre- 

 tations which they would otherwise have disdained; and their 

 prejudice was, that similarity in outward appearance always 

 entails similarity in habits of life. Whether the mother beetle 

 deposits her eggs in the clefts of the bark, or, what is far more 

 probable, penetrates through the openings of old burrows, and 

 lays her eggs in old galleries, these latter are certainly not the 

 work of the Melasis-larvo.. 



The similarity in outward appearance between this larva and 

 those of Buprestidaj means nothing more than that the former 

 is destined to live in the burrows formed by the latter or by 

 other similarly equipped xylophagous larvse. What the larva of 

 Mclusis tears and perforates with its mandibles must be some- 

 thing soft, not a hard substance ; in fact it cannot be anything 

 else than the skin of really xylophagous larvae and pupaj. What- 

 ever be its food, it must take it in by drinking, and there is no- 

 thing for it to drink but blood. 



IV. 



A minute orifice of the mouth ; pointed mandibles, placed at 

 a distance from the mouth ; no labrum ; the lower organs of 

 the mouth coalesced; short antennae; slender body; the ninth 

 abdominal segment serrated ; the anal segment placed under 

 the preceding ; movement by lateral winding of the body : these 

 were characteristics of the larva of Melasis, and these same cha- 

 racters are those of the larvae of Elateridse. Nor must we allow 

 ourselves to doubt their affinity because the former is destitute 

 of legs and of chitinous armour, or because the mandibles are 

 bent outwards instead of inwards and the second and third pair 

 of appendages of the mouth are rudimentary ; to lay overmuch 

 stress on these points would simply lead us through a byway 

 back to the same confusion which has done so much mischief, 

 and owing to which the Melasis-X'dvvdi was thought more closely 

 allied to the larvae of Buprestidae than to those of Elateridae merely 

 because it was apod and soft. The larva of Melasis does not in 

 reality present a greater modification from the type of Buprestidaj 

 than many of those which I have described in my Contributions 

 to the Knowledge of the Larvae of Coleoptcra* — not more, for in- 



* Naturhistorisk Tidsskrift, ser 3. vol. i. pp. 193-232, pi. 3-10; vol. iii. 

 pp. 131-224, pi. 1-12. 



