Beetles 
291 
vealing much of a change in the larva, although it is now more curved, less 
active, and somewhat like a small June-beetle grub; after a third moult it is 
still more helpless and grub-like. It now grows rapidly. When full-grown 
it leaves the ruined egg-pod, makes a little cell in the ground near by in 
which it lies motionless except for a gradual contracting and slow fourth 
moulting, after which it appears as a completely helpless semi-pupa, or 
coarctate larva. In this state it passes the winter. In spring the fifth 
moult takes place, leaving the larva much as before, only smaller and 
whiter. It becomes now rather active and burrows about, but takes no 
food, and after a few days again moults for the sixth time, to appear at last 
as a true pupa. Five or six days later the adult beetle emerges. 
Those blister-beetles which live parasitically on bees’ eggs instead of on 
those of the locust probably follow about the course described by Fabre 
for Sitaris humeralis, a European species, an account of which I quote 
from Sharp (Cambridge Natural History, vol. vi): “The eggs of the Sitaris 
are deposited in the earth in close proximity to the entrances to the bees’ 
nests, about August. They are very numerous, a single female producing, 
it is believed, upward of two thousand eggs. In about a month—towards 
the end of September—they hatch, producing a tiny triungulin of black 
color; the larvae do not, however, move away, but, without taking any food, 
hibernate in a heap, remaining in this state till the following April or May, 
when they become active. Although they are close to the abodes of the 
bees, they do not enter them, but seek to attach themselves to any hairy object 
that may come near them, and thus a certain number of them get on to the 
bodies of the Anthophora [the bees] and are carried to its nest. They 
attach themselves with equal readiness to any other hairy insect, and it is 
probable that very large numbers perish in consequence of attaching them¬ 
selves to the wrong insects. The bee in question is a species that nests in 
the ground and forms cells, in each of which it places honey and lays an 
egg, finally closing the receptacle. It is worthy of remark that in the case 
of the Anthophora observed by M. Fabre the male appears about a month 
before the female, and it is probable that the vast majority of the predatory 
larvae attach themselves to the male, but afterwards seize a favorable oppor¬ 
tunity, transfer themselves to the female, and so get carried to the cells of 
the bee. When she deposits an egg on the honey, the triungulin glides from 
the body of the bee on to the egg, and remains perched thereon as on a raft, 
floating on the honey, and is then shut in by the bee closing the cell. This 
remarkable act of slipping on to the egg cannot be actually witnessed, but 
the experiments and observations of the French naturalist leave little room 
for doubt as to the matter really happening in the way described. The egg 
of the bee forms the first nutriment of the tiny triungulin, which spends 
about eight days in consuming its contents; never quitting it, because con- 
