THE HETEROMERA. 
239 
tion : and it is probably the chance of this, added 
to the many fortunate contingencies required before 
the larvae can be safely landed within reach of their 
food, that causes such an enormous number of eggs to 
be laid by the parent beetle. As it is, all the perfect 
insects of this genus, seen by one observer in his life- 
time, would bear a ridiculously small proportion to 
the number of eggs laid by oue specimen. 
When carried by the unconscious bee to its nest, 
the Meloe larva devours the egg therein contained, 
changes (without leaving the shell of the latter) into a 
second form, — not unlike the larva of a Lamellicorn 
beetle in miniature, being arched, cylindrical, with 
toothed mandibles and stout legs, — and then subsists 
on the food intended by the bee for its own young. 
After some time this second form of the larva changes 
its outer covering, which is not entirely shed, but 
remains wrinkled together at the hinder apex of its 
body : it is then arched, distinctly composed of thirteen 
segments, attenuated at the extremities, and motion- 
less. From this false pupa (and probably after passing 
the winter) a third form of the larva appears, similar 
to the second ; but from this point it is only by analogy 
with the transformations of Sitaris muralis, an allied 
insect (Plate XI., Fig. 1), that we can form an idea of 
its final metamorphosis. 
The latter insect (which has large wings) is in its 
earlier stages, and indeed during all its life, a parasite 
upon certain masou bees of the genus Anthophora, 
common in old walls near London (the Rev. A. Badger 
having taken the first British specimen of the beetle 
at Chelsea). In this species the larva undergoes less 
vicissitudes than in Meloe, as the eggs (two or three 
