282 Transformations and Habits of Blister-Beetles. (May, 
the hairs and glands may also save the plant from destruction by 
animals, 3 
Of one thing the writer is certain, that these delicate objects are 
interesting to study. Situated as they are in immense numbers and 
in such great variety on the surface of so many plants, they are 
easily obtained and easily prepared for examination. They are 
excellent objects for a beginner in the use of the compound 
microscope; and for protracted and careful experiments, they are 
worthy the skill of the most accomplished scientist. In them 
we may spend weeks to advantage in observing the development 
of cells, the nucleus and nucleoli, and the gyration of the sap. In 
form and color they are exquisitely beautiful, while in variety they 
are inexhaustible. 
:0: 
ON THE TRANSFORMATIONS -AND HABITS OF THE 
BLISTER-BEETLES. 
BY CHAS. V. RILEY, A.M., PH.D. 
[Continued from the April Number.] 
History of Epicauta—lIt is generally stated by writers on the 
Hive-bee that the Oil-beetle (Meloë) is one of its parasites. The 
possibility that our more common blister-beetles were similarly 
parasitic on bees, taken in connection with the frequent complaints 
from apiarians of the wholesale death of bees from causes little 
understood, led me, some years since, to pay attention to the 
biological characteristics of the blister-beetles, in the hope of 
ascertaining whether or not they really bear any connection with 
bee mortality. From these investigations I am satisfied that Meloé 
is only parasitic on the perfect Hive-bee as it is on so many other 
winged insects that frequent flowers; and that it cannot well, in 
the nature of the case, breed in the cells of any social bee whose 
young are fed by nurses in open cells. 
I have had no difficulty in getting the eggs or the first larva of 
several of our vesicants, and described some of them at the Hart- 
ford (1874) meeting of the Am. Ass. Adv. Sc.; but these young 
larve refused to climb on to plants furnished to them, or to fasten 
to bees or other hairy insects. Nor would they nourish upon 
honey, bee-bread, or bee larvae on which they were placed. They 
showed a proclivity for burrowing in the ground, and acted 
quite differently from those of Meloé or Sitaris, which not 
: t 
