Miscellaneous. 169 



Alleged Evidence of the Moa from feathered Ornaments of Maori 

 Weapons. 



To the Editors of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 



Gentlemen, — I have been favoured by a letter from Dr. Hector, 

 F.B.S., dated "Wellington, New Zealand, 20th May, 1879," in- 

 forming me that the paragraph from the < Otago Daily Times ' 

 quoted in my ' Memoirs on the Extinct "Wingless Birds of New Zea- 

 land,' vol. i. p. 448, relating to Dr. Hector's examination of weapons 

 alleged to have been brought by Capt. Cook from New Zealand, is 

 incorrect, and that the editor's remark, " strange that this evidence 

 should have reposed in the cellars of the British Museum for a cen- 

 tury," is quite unfounded, and that Dr. Hector " never made any 

 statement that could possibly bear such construction as is implied by 

 the writer of the paragraph in question ." — II. Owen. 



On the Metamorphoses of the Blister-beetle (Lytta vesicatoria). 



By M. J. LlCUTENSXEIN. 



During the first warm days at the end of May or the beginning 

 of June, Blister-beetles in copulation are common on ashes, privets, 

 lilacs, &c, and when placed under a bell glass the females soon 

 make an excavation in the earth and deposit in it a mass of some 

 hundreds of rather elongated whitish and transparent eggs. In a 

 fortnight these eggs hatch and furnish the larvae long since known 

 as Triungulini, and figured by Batzeburg and others. They are 

 scaly, dark brown, with the meso- and metathorax and first abdo- 

 minal segment white. This larva has very acute jaws, black pro- 

 minent eyes, and two long caudal setae. 



After several fruitless trials the author got them to feed at first 

 upon the stomachs of honey-bees, and then upon eggs and yoxmg 

 larvae of various species of bees, especially Osmice and Ccratina 

 chalcites. Care must be taken to add honey to the eggs or young 

 larvae, because animal food is only fitted for this first larval form, 

 and the little Triungidinus seems to have an instinctive knowledge 

 that it must not touch the egg or larva unless there is beside it suf- 

 ficient honey to feed the form which is to succeed it. But when 

 this condition is fulfilled the little animal at once attacks the egg or 

 the larva, and is seen to increase in size rapidly. 



On the fifth or sixth day it changes its skin. It loses its caudal 

 setae and its brown colour, and becomes a small hcxapod worm ; its 

 jaws become obtuse, its eyes much less brilliant ; it quits the ani- 

 mal food and begins upon the honey. Five days later there is a 

 fresh change of skin, and the first modifications becomo still moro 

 strongly marked ; the jaws become still broader, and the eyes more 

 and moro obliterated. 



Five days later there is another moult, when the eyes entirely 

 disappear, the feet and the jaws become brown and horny at the 

 extremity, the insect acquires the aspect of a small larva of a 

 Lamellicorn, and is evidently destined to burrow in the ground. 



