NEUROPTERA. 67 
with two salient appendages at its extremity in the males. 
‘The legs are short. 
They are found in the warm localities of the southern coun- 
tries, clinging to plants, where they remain quiescent during 
the day. Most of them fly well. The nymph is inactive. 
These Insects form the genus 
MyrMeeon, Lin. 
Of which Fabricius has made two. 
MyrmeEteon, Fab. 
Or Myrmeleon proper, where the antennz enlarge insensibly, are 
almost fusiform, are hooked at the extremity, and much shorter than 
the body; the abdomen is long and linear. 
M. formicarium, L.; Roes., Insect., III, xvii—xx. About an 
inch long; blackish spotted with yellowish; wings diaphanous, 
with black nervures picked in with white; some obscure spots, 
and one whitish, near the extremity of the anterior margin(1). 
_ The number of Ants destroyed by the larva of this species, 
which is the most common one in Europe, has obtained for it 
the name of Formica-leo, Lion-ant, or Fourmilion. Its abdomen 
is extremely voluminous in comparison to the rest of the body. 
Its head is very small, flattened, and armed with two long man- 
dibles in the form of horns, dentated on the inner side and 
pointed at the extremity, which act at once as pincers and 
suckers. Its body is greyish or of the colour of the sand in 
which it lives. Although provided with six feet, it moves very 
slowly and almost always backwards. Thus, not being able to 
seize its prey by the celerity of its motions, it has recourse to 
stratagem, and lays a trap for it in a funnel-shaped cavity which 
it excavates in the finest sand, at the foot of a tree, old walls, or 
acclivities exposed to the south. It arrives at the intended 
scene of its operations by forming a ditch, and traces the area 
of the funnel, the size of which is in proportion to its growth. 
Then, always moving backwards, and describing as it goes 
spiral convolutions, the diameter of which progressively dimin- 
(1) For the other species, see Lat., Gen. Crust. et Insect., HI, p. 190; Oliv., 
Encyc. Méthod., article Myrmeleon. See also, both for this and the following 
genus, the work of M. Toussaint Charpentier, already quoted. 
