THE STREPSIPTERA. 
389 
body of the bee, and is nourished by its juices. The head and 
thorax of the parasite were noticed to be soldered into a single 
flattened mass, the baggy hind body being greatly enlarged like 
that of the female white ant. On carefully drawing out the whole 
body from the bee the mass was found to be very extensible, soft, 
and baggy, and on examining it under a high power of the 
microscope, multitudes of very minute larvae were observed, and 
they began to issue out from the body of the parent all alive, and 
not as eggs. The male of this Stylops childreni is totally unlike 
its partner, having large hind wings, and being able to fly, as has 
already been noticed. It appears, then, that the larvae are hatched 
or crawl out of the body of the mother on to the body of the 
bee, and are then transported to its nest. Then they enter the 
body of the bee larva, and live upon its fatty matter. The male 
Stylops is turned into a pupa within the bee, and so is the female ; 
but after the second metamorphosis the male flies off, leaving his 
wingless partner imprisoned for life, and she usually dies imme- 
diately after giving birth to her myriad offspring (Packard). 
The female respires by peculiarly arranged tracheae, and absorbs 
nourishment through her skin as well as by means of an alimen- 
tary canal which ends in a blind sac. All the beauties of the 
female, so far as they are visible to the male, consist in the tiny 
patch which appears just without the body of the unfortunate bee, 
and the ova collect in a space which opens between the united 
head and body and the abdomen. The front wings of the male 
are analogous to the elytra of beetles, and the correct zoological 
position of the insect is probably close to Meloe and Sitans 
amongst the Coleoptera. 
