546 TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



or triungulin^ the second larva, the coarctate larva or pseudo- 

 pupa, the third larva, the true pupa, and the imago. 



HISTORY OF MELOE. 



The history of Meloe may be briefly summed up as follows : — 

 The nevsdy hatched or first larva (now generally called triiingu- 

 lin) was first mentioned in 1700 by the Holland entomologist 

 Goedart, who hatched it from the egg Frisch and Reaumur both 

 mistook it for a louse peculiar to bees and flies. DeGeer, who 

 also obtained it ft.om the egg, mentions it in 1775 as a parasite of 

 Hymenoptera. Linnaeus called what is evidently the same thing, 

 Pediculus apis; Kirby in 1802 described it as Pediculus meliltce^ 

 and Dufour in 1828 named it Triungulinus andrenetaruin. New- 

 port in 1S45 (7Va«5. Linn. Soc.^ vol. xx. p. 297) first rightly 

 concluded that it was carried into the nests of bees, and described, 

 in addition, the full-grown larva from exuvial characters, and the 

 coarctate larva and pupa which he found in the cells of Antho- 

 phora retusa. He failed, however, to fill the gap between the 

 first and full-grown larva ; and this Fabre first infercntially did in 

 1858 {Ann. d. Sc. Nat., Zool. t. ix. p. 265) b)' tracing the analo- 

 gous stages of Sitaris. 



The female Meloe is very prolific. She lays at three or four 

 different intervals, in loose irregular masses in the ground, and 

 may produce from three to four thousand eggs. These are soft, 

 whitish, cylindrical, and rounded at each end They give birth 

 to the triungulins, which, a few days after hatching — the number 

 depending on the temperature — run actively about and climb on 

 to Composite, Ranunculaceous and other flowers, from which they 

 attach themselves to bees and flies that visit the flowers. Fasten- 

 ing alike to many hairy Diptera and to Hymenoptera which can 

 be of little or no service to them, many are doomed to perish, and 

 only the few fortunate ones are carried to the proper cells of some 

 AnthopJiora. Once in the cell, the triungulin falls upon the bee 

 egg, which it soon exhausts. A molt then takes place and the 

 second larva is produced. Clumsy and with locomotive power 

 reduced to a minimum, this second larva devours the thickened 

 honey stored up for the bee larva. It then changes to the pseudo- 

 pupa with the skin of the second larva only partially shed ; then 

 to a third larva within the partially rent pseudo-pupal skin, and 

 finally to the true pupa and imago. These different changes of 



