78 | September, 
sitie Hymenoptera. One morning he saw, to his great astonishment, a 
pupa of Mantispa emerge from the bag. Here then was the mystery 
nearly solved. The egg-bag contained inside the second yellowish 
cocoon of the Mantispa between two spun-together remains of spiders’ 
egos. 
After this I lost no opportunity of obtaining Mantispa larve from 
the egg, and placed them in the egg-sacs of various spiders ; but they 
all died without eating. 
Through these observations, I came almost to the conclusion that 
an analogy existed between Fabre’s remarks on the habits of the larva of 
Melée and that of Mantispa. The sequel proved that much similarity 
exists between these two genera. 
The failure of the last experiments resulted from ignorance, not 
only of the right egg-bags, but also of the proper time to place the 
larve with these receptacles. The observations seemed, however, to 
prove that the larve hybernate at large, and, after a fast of eight months 
(from September until April of the following year), first enter the 
spider’s bag. Without doubt there was an awkward interval, which 
I had not clearly understood, and which all earlier observations failed 
to elucidate. (It is known that the larve of Sitaris fast seven months 
before they infest the bees.) 
A collection of larvee which I bred from the egg in August, 1868, 
hybernated on a piece of bark, placed closely together, in a glass filled 
with earth about an inch in depth, and which was covered with paper. 
Next April they began to disperse. At this time, I obtained, with 
much trouble, 20 examples of Lycosa inguilina, Koch, with their large 
white globular egg-bags (I may remark here that the larve will not 
enter the small green bags of Lycosa fluviatilis). These I threw into 
the glass with the MJantispa larve, and had not long to wait before 
many of them entered the bags. Here they did not begin to feed 
immediately, but often rested a week, apparently waiting for some 
special condition of the eggs; one could see them unaltered through 
the walls of the bag. 
On the 26th April the larvee commenced moving, and on the 17th 
May I opened an egg-bag, and found therein the larva yet in its first 
skin, and also a number of young dead spiders. After the moult, which 
soon followed (the only one which I observed, save that before the 
change to pup), the larve altered their character entirely, and took 
the form of maggots with rudimentary legs, their movements being 
those of a footless bee-larva, the short, thick, leg-stumps serving them 
