1931 ] 
The Biology of the Mecoptera 
51 
men devouring a tipulid with vestigial wings, 4 and he sug- 
gests a possible mimicry of this species on the part of 
the Bittacid. 
The feeding habits of the Boreidae have been more or 
less obscure until recently. Brauer observed that the adults 
fed on moss, as well as on Produra and other small ani- 
mals living among the moss roots. Whitycombe concluded 
from investigations which he made in 1921 that they fed 
on damaged or dead insects, although he found some speci- 
mens feeding on the bases of moss plants. Subsequently, 
however, he made further inquiries into the feeding habits 
and decided that the food is normally moss, although in 
captivity, when proper food is not available, other sub- 
stances may be consumed. Pie also found that the amount 
of food needed was very slight, but a great deal of moisture 
was required. 
In the preceding pages we have reviewed what is known 
of the habits of the adult Mecoptera, and we shall next con- 
sider the main features of their metamorphosis. Here 
again, we have no knowledge of the life-history of the 
Meropidae and Notiothaumidae, and our acquaintance with 
the development in the other families is almost entirely 
confined to old-world species of Panorpa, Bittacus, and 
Boreus. Curiously enough, Swammerdamm, who investi- 
gated the metamorphosis of manj^ groups in 1669, including 
some Neuroptera and Trichoptera, apparently made no ob- 
servations on the Mecoptera. The earliest research of this 
kind was done in 1831 by Maquart, who briefly described 
the pupa and showed that it was the libera type. The pupa 
was also described and figured by Stein in 1838, and the 
complete life-history of three European species (P. varia - 
bilis , montana, and communis) was worked out by Brauer 
in 1863. Some of the larvae and pupae which he bred sixty- 
seven years ago are now in the Hagen collection of the 
Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1894 Felt succeeded 
in rearing the larvae of a Panorpa (probably P. canadensis) 
at Ithaca, New York, but he was not able to obtain a pupa. 
4 Dr. C. P. Alexander tells me that this species is almost certainly 
Tipula vestigipennis Doane. 
