1878.] Transformations and Habits of Blister-Beetles. 287 
Another six or seven days elapse and the scarabzidoid skin is 
rent and shed with but slight modification in the form and char- 
acters of the animal. In this, the Ultimate stage of the second 
larva (PI. 1., Fig. 5) the creature grows apace, its head being con- 
stantly bathed in the rich juices of the locust eggs, which it now — 
rapidly sucks or more or less completely devours. The color is 
more yellowish than it was before, and the power to stretch and 
travel on the venter on an even surface is still retained. In another 
week it forsakes the remnants of the pabular mass, and, by bur- 
rowing a short distance in the clear soil, avoids the deleterious de- 
caying influences of these egg remnants. In the soil it forms a 
smooth cavity, within which it lies stretched on one side, motion- 
less and gradually contracting. The skin separates and becomes 
— loose at the end of the third or fourth day, when it splits on the 
top of the head and thoracic joints and is worked toward the ex- 
tremity, but never fully shed. The mouth-parts and legs are now 
quite rudimentary and tuberculous, the soft skin rapidly becomes 
rigid and of a deeper yellow color, and we have what has been 
called the semi-pupa (Pl. 1., Fig. 8). The term pseudo-pupa 
given it by Fabre is more appropriate, and I should prefer myself 
to call it the coarctate larva, for it is nothing but a rigid and dor- 
mant larval stage, having its counterpart in the well-known “flax- 
seed” stage of the Hessian-fly larva and in the so-called coarc- 
tate pupa of the Diptera generally. A similar dormant but less 
rigid larval stage occurs with many Tenthredinide in Hymenop- 
tera, and, in fact, the summer dormancy of certain Lepidopterous 
larvæ and the winter dormancy of others is analogous. We find 
something similar, therefore, in all the orders undergoing com- 
plete transformations, but in no insects is the change so marked 
and exceptional or the freeing of the subsequent larva from the 
coarctate larva so striking as in these Meloide. The insect has 
the power of remaining in this coarctate larval condition for a 
long period, and generally thus hybernates. 
In spring the coarctate larval skin is, in its turn, rent on the top’ 
of the head and thorax, and there crawls out of it the Third 
Larva} which differs in no respect from the ultimate stage of the 
second larva already mentioned, except in the somewhat reduced 
1 The coarctate larva is, properly speaking, the third, and that following it the 
fourth; but just as I have preferred to designate as special stages of the second larva 
the stages between the first and fourth molts, so I prefer to call the last larva the 
third, to conform to the nomenclature now generally employed. 
Ae ee 21 
IL—NO 
