456 



NEUROPTERA 



the under side of each mandible; in this groove the elongate 

 and slender lobe that replaces the maxilla 

 — -there being no maxillary palpi — • 

 plays backwards and forwards, probably 

 raking or dragging backwards to the 

 buccal cavity at each movement a small 

 quantity of the contents of the empaled 

 victim. The small lower lip is peculiar, 

 consisting in greater part of the two lobes 

 that support the labial palpi. The pharynx 

 is provided with a complex set of muscles, 

 and, together with the buccal cavity, func- 

 tions as an instrument of suction. After the 

 prey has been sucked dry the carcass is 

 jerked away to a distance. When the 

 ant-lion larva is full grown it forms a 

 globular cocoon by fastening together 

 grains of sand with fine silk from a 

 slender spinneret placed at the posterior 

 extremity of the body ; in this cocoon it 

 changes to an imago of very elongate 

 form, and does not emerge until its meta- 

 morphosis is quite completed, the skin of the 

 pupa being, when the Insect emerges, left behind in the cocoon. 

 The names by which the European ant-lion has been known are 

 very numerous. It was called Formicajo and Formicario by Vallis- 

 neri about two hundred years ago ; Keaumur called it Formica-leo, 

 and this was adopted by some modern authors as a generic name 

 for some other of the ant-lions. The French people call these 

 Insects Fourmilions, of which ant-lion is our English equivalent. 

 Tlie Latinised form of the term ant-lion, Formicaleo, is not now 

 apphed to the common ant-lion as a generic term, it having been 

 proposed to replace it by Mrjrmecoleon, Myrmeleo, or Alyrmeleon ; 

 this latter name at present seems likely to become generally 

 adopted. There are several species of the genus found in Europe, 

 and their trivial names have been confounded by various authors 

 in such a way as to make it quite uncertain, without reference to 

 a synonymic list, what species is intended by any particular writer. 

 The species found in the neighbourhood of Paris, and to which it 

 may be presumed Eeaumur's history refers, is now called Myrme- 



Fm. 300. — Larva of Myrme- 

 leon2wMidi2jennis. (After 

 Meinert. ) 



