abundance at times, and their commercial value and interest. The same remarks hold true of the allied genera Macrobasis, Epicauta and Henous, the species of which have the same valuable vesicatory properties as Cantharis. Some of these species are very common in the United States, and quite injurious to vegetation, swarming at times on potato vines, beans, clematis, and other plants. Their great numbers and destructive habits make it all the more remarkable that so little has hitherto been discovered of their early life. Harris, who evidently had hatched the first larva of the Ash-gray Blister-beetle (Macrobasis unicolor Kirby), says: "The larvæ are slender, somewhat flattened grubs, of a yellowish color, banded with black, with a small reddish head, and six legs. These grubs are very active in their motions, and appear to live upon fine roots in the ground; but I have not been able to keep them till they arrived at maturity, and therefore know nothing further of their history." (Ins. inj. to Vegetation, p. 138.) Latreille, according to Westwood, states that the larvæ live beneath the ground, feeding on the roots of vegetables (Intr., vol. i., p. 301), but the statement is evidently founded on conjecture. Ratzeburg, who well describes the method of oviposition of the European Cantharis vesicatoria, and roughly figures the first larva (Forst Insecten, II, Col. Taff. ii, fig. 27 B), believed that it was a plant-feeder in the immature state. Olivier describes what is possibly the second larva as a soft, yellowish-white, 13-jointed grub, with short filiform antennæ, and short, corneous, thoracic legs-"living in earth" (Traité Elém., etc., M. Girard, Col., p. 618); but his account is very loose, and may apply to any number of other coleopterous larvæ. Audouin, who studied. the Cantharides intently, making them the subject of his thesis in his medical examination, was obliged to confess that absolutely nothing was known of their larval history. This is about all we learn from the older authors, and more recent writers have shed no further light upon the subject; Mr. Wm. Saunders, of London, Ont., in a paper on these insects, read at the 1876 meeting. of the American Pharmaceutical Society, being unable to add anything more definite. Among the early writers the opinion. was general that the Blister-beetle larvæ in question were vegetable feeders, like their parents. In 1874 Laboulbène mentioned the fact (Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, 1874, lxxxiii) that some one (name not given) had seen the European Cantharis vesicatoria issuing from the ground in the neighborhood of which there were wasps (guêpes--no specific reference given), and rashly concludes that the former were parasitic on these. Still more recently M. J. Lichtenstein, of Montpellier, France, has endeavored to discover the larval habits of this species, and gives some reasons for believing that it develops in the nests of Halictus. These facts, as well as analogy, pointed to a parasitic life and partly carnivorous, partly mellivorous diet for our own allied species, since the life-history of two genera in the family, viz: Meloë Linn. and Sitaris Latr., has been fully traced. Indeed, the young of all vesicants belonging to the Meloida, so far as anything has yet been known of them, develop in the cells of honeymaking bees, first devouring the egg of the bee and then appropriating the honey and bee-bread stored up by the same. They all are remarkable, in individual development, for passing through seven distinct stages, viz: the egg, the first larva or triungulin, the second larva, the coarctate larva or pseudo-pupa, the third larva, the true pupa, and the imago. They are further remarkable in that the first pair of spiracles are distinctly mesothoracic and dorsal in the triungulin. History of Meloë.—The history of Meloë may be briefly summed up as follows: The newly hatched or first larva (now generally called triungulin) was first mentioned in 1700 by the Holland entomologist Gædart, who hatched it from the egg. Frisch and Réaumur both mistook it for a louse peculiar to bees and flies. De Geer, who also obtained it from the egg, mentions it in 1775 as a parasite of Hymenoptera. Linnæus called what is evidently the same thing, Pediculus apis; Kirby, in 1802, described it as Pediculus melitte, and Dufour, in 1828, named it Triungulinus andrenetarum. Newport, in 1845 (Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. xx, p. 297), first rightly concluded that it was carried into the nests of bees, and described, in addition, the full-grown larva from exuvial characters, and the coarctate larva and pupa which he found in 1 1 Quite recently (Comptes Rendus de l' Ac. des. Sc., Paris, Oct. 11, 1877, p. 628) he has succeeded, by furnishing the larvæ of C. vesicatoria with artificial nourishment composed of the filled stomachs of honey-making bees, and especially of Ceratina, in tracing the development from the triungulin to the coarctate larva, which last differs from those of the other species considered by me, in freeing itself entirely from the second larval skin. He has thus established the fact that Cantharis agrees with the other species of the family in its hypermetamorphosis; but its natural habits re main as much as ever a mystery. the cells of Anthophora retusa. He failed, however, to fill the gap between the first and full-grown larva; and this Fabre first inferentially did in 1858 (Ann. d. Sc. Nat., Zoöl. t. ix, p. 265) by tracing the analogous stages of Sitaris. The female Meloë is very prolific. She lays at three or four different intervals, in loose irregular masses in the ground, and may produce from three to four thousand eggs. These are soft, whitish, cylindrical, and rounded at each end. They give birth to the triungulins, which, a few days after hatching-the number depending on the temperature-run actively about and climb on to Composite, Ranunculaceous and other flowers, from which they attach themselves to bees and flies that visit the flowers. Fastening alike to many hairy Diptera and to Hymenoptera which can be of little or no service to them, many are doomed to perish, and only the few fortunate ones are carried to the proper cells of some Anthophora. Once in the cell, the triungulin falls upon the bee egg, which it soon exhausts. A molt then takes place and the second larva is produced. Clumsy and with locomotive power reduced to a minimum, this second larva devours the thickened honey stored up for the bee larva. It then changes to the pseudo-pupa with the skin of the second larva only partially shed; then to a third larva within the partially rent pseudo-pupal skin, and finally to the true pupa and imago. These different changes of form are known by the name of hypermetamorphoses, the term first given them by Fabre to distinguish them from the normal changes from larva to pupa and imago, experienced by insects generally. The triungulin or first larva (Fig. 1, a) is Fig. 1.-Meloë; a, first larva; b, claws; c, antenna; d, characterized by a prominent labrum, very stout thighs, unarmed shanks, three broad and subspatulate tarsal claws, feeble and reduced trophi, untoothed jaws, 3jointed antennæ, ending in a long seta, and four anal maxillary palpus; e, labial palpus; f, mandible; g, an setæ, the two inner abdominal joint; h, imago 9; i, antenna of . ones longest. When the abdomen is shrunken the general aspect is very much that of Pediculus, and it is hardly surprising that some of the early describers so determined it. History of Sitaris.-The history of Sitaris is also well known and agrees very closely with that of Melvë. Its first larva was figured many years ago by Westwood (Introduction, etc., fig. 34, 5) from specimens obtained from Audouin, who found the female Sitaris in the cells of Anthophora enclosed in its thin pseudopupal and second larval skins, which Audouin erroneously took to be the pellicle of the devoured bee-larva. But the complete life-history of the genus was first given by Fabre in 1857 (Ann. d. Sc. Nat., Zool., t. vii. p. 299; t. ix. p. 265), who studied the S. humeralis Fabr., while that of S. colletis V.-M. has been more recently given by M. Valery-Mayet, of Montpellier, France (Ann. Soc. Ent. de Fr. 1875, p. 65), from whom I have specimens in all stages. The former species infests the nests of Anthophora, the latter those of Colletes. In the former the newly hatched larvæ hybernate in huddled masses in the galleries of the bee; in the latter they hybernate in the bee-cell, slowly feeding while the temperature permits; but such differences doubtless depend on the relative earliness in the autumn that the eggs are laid. The first larva or triunguiin (Fig. 2, a) agrees very much in the head, tarsal and general characters with that of Meloë, but differs in several important particulars, and especially in having a pair of pre-anal spinnerets, from which is secreted a e I 9 a serous, sticky fluid, Fig. 2.-Sitaris; a, first larva; g, anal spinnerets and clasps of same; b, second larva; e, pseudo-pupa; ƒ, which aids the animal third larva; c, pupa; d, imago 9 (after V.-Mayet). The hypermet- in holding firmly to the bee that is to carry it into the nest. A pre-anal pair of claspers also assist in this work. amorphoses are very similar to those of Meloë. after absorbing the contents of the bee egg, molts, and thereafter floats upon and devours the honey-the pseudo-pupa, third larva and true pupa all forming in due time within the second larval skin. The female does not feed, and on account of her heavy abdomen travels but a short distance from the bee-burrows where she developed. History of Hornia.-While the natural history of none of our N. A. species of Meloë has been traced or recorded, they will, beyond all doubt, be found to agree with their European congeners in their partial parasitism on Mason-bees. In examining the cells of Anthophora sponsa Smith, I have thus far failed to discover that Meloë is parasitic upon that species, but Meloë is in reality very rare around St. Louis. I have, however, found on four different occasions in the Fall, within the sealed cells of the bee mentioned, a very interesting and anomalous Meloid (Hornia minutipennis Riley), which may be taken to represent the typical partial parasitism of the family in the United States. There is a tendency in the family to wing reduction, but in no hitherto described species is the reduction carried to such extremes as in this (Plate 1, fig. 13) both sexes having the elytra as rudimentary as in the of the well-known European Glow-worm (Lampyris noctiluca). Another characteristic feature is its simple tarsal claws, which, together with the rudimentary wings and the heavy body, show it to be a degradational form. Anthophora sponsa, its host, builds mostly in steeply-inclined or perpendicular clay banks, and, in addition, extends a tube of clay from the entrance. The burrow of this bee has usually two branches which decline about an inch from the surface of the bank, and six or eight cells are arranged end to end. By means of saliva the inside of the cell is rendered impervious to the moisture of the honey and bee-bread stored in it for the young. It is evident that this clumsy Meloid will have difficulty in crawling out of or about the cells, and it is probably subterranean and seldom, if ever, leaves the bee gallery. The male can climb and drag his body, but with some difficulty, up a steep surface if rough, and, as he does not leave the bee-cell till spring, when the Anthophora tubes are very generally broken and have fallen, he may possibly wander a short distance from the mouth of the bee-burrow; but the female will naturally possess less power of locomotion. The triungulin is yet unknown, but the ultimate stage of the second larva as well as the coarctate larva, as shown by the distended and unruptured skins, exhibit the ordinary family characteristics, the legs and mouth-parts being atrophied in the former, and merely tuberculous in the latter. The lateral ridge, as found in |
