214 Transformations and Habits of Blister-Beetles. [April, 
abundance at times, and their commercial value and interest. 
The same remarks hold true of the allied genera Macrobasis, 
Epicauta and Henous, the species of which have the same valu- 
able vesicatory properties as Cantharis. Some of these species 
are very common in the United States, and quite injurious to 
vegetation, swarming at times on potato vines, beans, . clematis, 
and other plants. Their great numbers and destructive habits 
make it all the more remarkable that so little has hitherto been 
discovered of their early life. Harris, who evidently had hatched _ 
the first larva of the Ash-gray Blister-beetle (Macrobasis unicolor : 
Kirby), says: “ The larvæ are slender, somewhat flattened grubs, 
of a yellowish color, banded with black, with a small reddish 
head, and six legs. These grubs are very active in their motions; 
and appear to live upon fine roots in the ground; but I have not 
been able to keep them till they arrived at maturity, and there- _ 
fore know nothing further of their history.” (Zas. inj. to Vegeta- 
tion, p. 138.) Latreille, according to Westwood, states that the 
larvee live beneath the ground, feeding on the roots of vegetables 
(Jutr., vol. i., p. 301), but the statement is evidently founded on : 
= conjecture. Ratzeburg, who well describes the method of ovipo- —_ 
sition of the European Cantharis vesicatoria, and roughly figures 
the first larva (Forst Insecten, II, Col. Taff. ii, fig. 27 B), believed 
that it was a plant-feeder in the immature state. Olivier describes 
what is possibly the second larva as a soft, yellowish-white, 
13-jointed grub, with short filiform antennz, and short, corneous, 
thoracic legs—‘“ living in earth” (Traité Elém., etc., M. Girard, 
Col., p. 618); but his account is very loose, and may apply t° 
any number of other coleopterous larve. Audouin, who studied 
the Cantharides intently, making them the subject of his thesis 
in his medical examination, was obliged to confess that absolutely 
nothing was known of their larval history. This is about all we - 
learn from the older authors, and more recent writers have shed 
no further light upon the subject;.Mr. Wm. Saunders, of Lon 
don, Ont., in a paper on these insects, read at the 1876 meeting 
of the American Pharmaceutical Society, being unable to add 
anything more definite. Among the early writers the opinion 
was general that the Blister-beetle larvae in question were veer 
table feeders, like their parents. In 1874 Laboulbéne mentioned 
. the fact (Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, 1874, \xxxili) that some one 
~ (name not given) had seen the European Cantharis vesicatoria 
