1878.] Transformations and Habits of Blister-Beetles. 283 
only readily attach to bees in confinement, but which, in the 
case of Meloé, I have known to so crowd upon 
mature hive bees as to worry them to death and 
cause extended loss in the apiary. Explorations 
into the nests of Solitary bees gave no clue, and, 
in fact, the immense numbers in which the more 
common blister-beetles occur, rendered a parasitic 
life upon such bees highly improbable. In sweeping 
$ Epi- 
plants and flowers with the net, I had never met with canta. vittata: 
any of the first larvae with which I had become famil- ” ooe tis) 
iar, as already indicated; while I had on several occasions, in 
digging ground where there was no trace of bee nests, met 
with the curious pseudo-pupa so characteristic of the family. 
While analogy and the law of unity of habit in species of 
the same family pointed, therefore, to a parasitic life, I began 
to conclude, from the facts just stated, that the parasitism 
was of another kind, having satisfied myself by various ex- 
periments that the triungulins did not feed on roots. Few 
discoveries are stumbled upon. We find as a rule that only 
which we anticipate or look for. In 1876, in digging up the 
eggs of the Rocky Mountain locust (Caloptenus spretus) at Man- 
hattan, Kansas, the pseudo-pupz were not unfrequently met with. 
The thought at once occurred to me that locust eggs might be 
the proper food for these blister-beetle larve, and it was encour- 
aged by the fact that the Meloids abound most in those dry west- 
ern regions where the Acrididz most prevail, and by a pretty 
distinct recollection, which my notes support, that the years when 
the vesicants were most injurious to potatoes had been preceded 
by dry Falls, during which there had been much locust injury and, 
necessarily, unusual locust increase. The suspicion thus raised 
that these blister-beet- 
les preyed in the pre- 
paratory states upon 
locust eggs was con- 
firmed last spring by 
finding the larve of 
different ages within 
the egg-pods and de- 
vouring the eggs of 
— Macrobasis unicolor :—a normal, gray form 
Capens Arens. MT, et (murina) form; c, d, male and female anten- 
| AN. Godfrey had, also, ne of either 
