114 
BRITISH BEES. 
tlie bee ancl ride about, the latter using every effort to 
throw his rider. 
“As the Stylops emerges from the body of the bee, the 
latter seems to suffer from much irritating excitement.” 
Mr. Thwaites writes to me, on the 12th May, thus : 
“ I had the good fortune to capture a Stylops flying, and 
on the Tuesday following saw at least twenty flying 
about in the garden, but so high from the ground that I 
could capture only about half-a-dozen; since that time 
they have become gradually more scarce. 
“The little animals are exceedingly graceful in their 
flight, taking long sweeps as if carried along by a gentle 
breeze, and occasionally hovering at a few inches distance 
from the ground. Their expanse of wing and mode of 
flight give them a very different appearance to any other 
insect on the wing. When captured they are exceedingly 
active, running up and down the sides of the bottle in 
which they are confined, moving their wings and antennae 
very rapidly. Their term of life seems to be very short, 
none of those I have captured living beyond five hours, 
and one I extracted from a bee in the afternoon was 
dead the next morning. 
“All the bees stylopized, both male and female, I 
have taken, have manifested it by having underneath the 
fourth (invariably) upper segment of the abdomen a pro¬ 
tuberance which is scale-like when the Stylops is in the 
larva state; but which is much larger and more rounded 
when the Stylops is ready to emerge. A bee gives nourish¬ 
ment generally to but one Stylops; but I have occasionally 
found two, and once three larvae in one bee.” 
The structure of these insects is very remarkable : the 
typical genus Stylops is named from its compound eyes, 
which consist of a very few (about fifteen) hexagonal 
