THE UELOID&. 



337 



The first complete observations on the subject were made by M. Fabre, who studied the 

 development of Sitaris muralis (family MELOID.*) with great perseverance and success. The Beetle 

 is a well-known British as well as Continental insect, and was long suspected to be parasitic on the 

 common Mason Bee, in the sense of living, in the larva state, on the food stored \ip in the cells of the 

 Bee. M. Fabre discovered that it feeds on the eggs of the Bee as well as on the provision of honey 

 stored up for the young, undergoing a singular change of form in the interval between the two 

 operations, besides other metamorphoses, before assuming the ordinary pupa condition. The female 

 Sitaris, in the summer, lays her eggs in a mass glued together, at the entrance of the cylindrical 

 gallery in a wall or bank 

 within which the mother 

 Bee constructs her cells. 

 In the course of a month 

 the young crawl forth in 

 the form of little, elon- 

 gated, six-footed larvae, 

 each foot terminated by a 

 very sharp and movable 

 claw, and the abdomen, 

 near its tip, provided 

 with two horny hooks. 

 Contrary to all natural 

 expectation, these larvte, 

 instead of searching for 

 food straightway, remain 

 for months lasting and 

 motionless, until, in the 

 early spring of the fol- 

 lowing year, the early 

 Bees (always of the male 

 sex) begin to emergefrom 

 the hole ; then in an 

 instant the sleepy larv;e 

 start up, and fasten them- 

 selves with their strong 

 grappling-hooks to their 

 hairy bodies. From the 

 male Bees they quickly 

 pass, during union of 

 the sexes, about a month 

 later, to the females, and 

 thus get conveyed to the 

 newly-made cells, where, 

 after the mother Bee has 

 stored up a provision of 



liquid honey and laid an egg on the surface, the hungry larva slips off the Bee's body to the 

 e g ) i n doing which it dexterously contrives to avoid being rolled off into the liquid, where it would 

 infallibly perish. Alighting on the egg it quickly tears it, and commences to devour its contents. 

 The repast lasts eight clays, during which the little animal grows rapidly, and at the end, having 

 completed its growth, and still mounted on the empty egg-shell as a raft, its skin splits down 

 the back, and it enters its second stage. It is now a soft white grub, blind, and provided with 

 only rudimentary feet. It has changed, in fact, from an active carnivorous insect into a blind 

 and helpless honey-feeder, adapted to the condition in which it is placed, of having food in 

 abundance without the need of searching for it. It tumbles off the egg-shell into the honey, 



MELOE CICATRICOSUS. 



SITAHIS Ml'BALIS. 



233 



