104 Miscellaneous. 
increased in size; and five or six days afterwards their skin split. 
There then appeared a perfectly different larva, of a milk-white 
colour, without caudal appendages, and having only very soft inte- 
guments in place of the coriaceous envelope which it had just 
thrown off. Here, again, I was obliged to feel my way to find an 
acceptable food ; and supposing that in nature the larve live on the 
concreted honey of the subterranean bees of the genera Halictus, 
Andrena, and their allies, I offered them honey of Osmia, and espe- 
cially of Ceratina, the only one I had at hand in my apiaries. 
Although considerably objecting to this nutriment, which evi- 
dently is not that intended for them by nature, my larve, finding 
nothing else in the glass tubes which served as their prison, ate the 
honey of Ceratina, grew, and moulted three times. Gradually the 
jaws, at first smooth and much pointed, acquire first one, and then 
two teeth on the inner side; the antenne change in form ; the eyes, 
at first very visible, disappear by degrees; and finally, in about 
thirty days, a larva, arrived at its full development (about 2 centims. 
in length), moved uneasily in its tube, indicating sufficiently that it 
wanted a condition indispensable to its transformation, namely the 
earth. 
I was willing enough to furnish it with this, but wished at the 
same time to be able to continue to observe it. I therefore took a 
glass tube about 2 centims. in diameter, stopped at its extremity by 
a piece of sponge, and 3 inches long; this I buried in the moist 
earth of a vessel; then, after filling it with garden mould, I put my 
larva into it. The latter soon set to work with ardour; by the aid 
of its strong legs and horny mandibles, it quickly buried itself and 
concealed itself from my view. This was on the 7th of September ; 
after waiting eight days I carefully drew out the glass tube, and, to 
my great joy, saw against its walls a small rounded cell in which 
the larva reposed. But the next day (16th September), and there- 
fore nine days after it had buried itself, the skin of this last larva 
split in its turn and left me in presence of the pseudonymph, which 
is common, I believe, to all the Vesicantia; that is to say, there is a 
true chrysalis with a coriaceous envelope surrounding the actual 
nymph, which will be afterwards marked out. 
I ought, perhaps, to have waited for the exclusion before making 
the present communication to the Academy ; but as the last trans- 
formation will not take place till towards the spring, I thought 
that it would be of interest to make known the Cantharis in its 
different forms from the egg to the pseudonymph. ‘The latter is 
slightly arched, of a light brown colour, with the head and feet 
showing themselves in the form of obtuse mamille. The skin of 
the larva is completely thrown off, whilst in Meloé it half envelops 
the pseudonymph, and in Sitaris covers it entirely *— Comptes 
Rendus, October 1, 1877, p. 628. 
* This summary will be completed in a memoir that I am preparing 
with M. Valéry Mayet, who is at present busy making the drawings of 
the different states of the insect. This paper will appear in the ‘ Annales 
de la Société entomologique de France.’ 
