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During the course of the year I learnt from Léon Dufour, to whom I had spoken of the Sitares, that the tiny creature which he had found on the Andrenæ and described under the generic name of Triungulinus, was recognized later by Newport as the larva of a Meloe, or Oil-beetle. Now it so happened that I had found a few Oil-beetles in the cells of the same Anthophora that nourishes the Sitares.
This freestone-factory causes me no astonishment: when the manufacturer undergoes his change, it serves for various chemical works. Certain Oil-beetles, such as the Sitaris, locate in it the urate of ammonia, the refuse of the transformed organism; the Sphex, the Pelopæi, the Scoliæ, use it to manufacture the shellac wherewith the silk of the cocoon is varnished.
The last pair is rather smaller than the rest, a peculiarity which we have already noted in the larva which precedes the pseudochrysalis. On comparing the pseudochrysalids of the Oil-beetles and Sitares, we observe a most striking similarity between the two. The same structure occurs in both, down to the smallest details.
It is even probable that, as a rule, the development is even slower and that the Oil-beetles, like the Sitares, for the most part spend the cold season in the pseudochrysalid state, a state well-adapted to the winter torpor, and do not achieve their numerous forms until the return of the warm weather. The Sitares and Meloes belong to the same family, that of the Meloidæ.
Well, I never found anything that I could detach; I never succeeded in extracting a larva in its tertiary form, though this larva is so easily obtained from the amber pouches of the Sitares and, in the Oil-beetles and Cerocomæ, emerges of its own accord from the split wrapper of the pseudochrysalis.
This is enough, I think, to prove that the grub is not a strict stay-at-home, as are the larvæ of the Sitares and the Oil-beetles when devouring the ration of the Anthophora. I imagine that, in the burrows of the Tachytes, the grub, when its heap of Mantes is consumed, moves from cell to cell until it has satisfied its appetite.
The larvæ of the Sitares, like those of the Oil-beetles, cling like grim death to the fleece of their generous host and make him carry them into the cell.
What does it want? I give it a Bee, a Halictus, to see if it will settle on the insect, as the Sitares and Oil-beetles would not fail to do. My offer is scorned. It is not a winged conveyance that my prisoners require. Bramble-bees and Others: chaps. xii. to xiv.
If we soften it in water, we easily recognize that it possesses an organization almost identical with that which preceded the pseudochrysalis. In the latter case only, the mandibles and the legs are not so robust. Thus, after passing through the pseudochrysalid stage, the Oil-beetles for some time resume the preceding form, almost without modification. The nymph comes next.
Newport suspects that the young Oil-beetles, on emerging from their natal burrow, climb upon the neighbouring plants, especially upon the Cichoriceæ, and wait, concealed among the petals, until a few Bees chance to plunder the flower, when they promptly fasten on to their fur and allow themselves to be borne away by them.
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