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When the May Flower "O commendable flowre and most in minde" blooms, and the willows hang out their golden catkins, we shall hear the hum of the wild bee, and the insect hunter will reap a rich harvest of rarities. Seek now on the abdomen of various wild bees, such as Andrena, for that most eccentric of all our insects, the Stylops Childreni.
The Stylops, being hatched while still in the body of the parent, is, therefore viviparous. She probably never lays eggs. I laid it under a tumbler, when the delicate insect flew and tumbled about till it died of exhaustion in a few hours. It appears, then, that the larvæ are hatched during the middle or last of June from eggs fertilized in April.
In like manner the soft-bodied maggot of the weevil is evidently the result of its living habitually in cavities in nuts and fruits. Did the soft, baggy female Stylops live exposed, like its allies in other families, to an out-of-doors life, its skin would inevitably become hard and chitinous.
Lepidopters as butterflies, etc. 5. Hemipters as cicada, plant-lice, fleas, etc. 6. Coleopters as cockchafers, fire-flies, etc. 7. Dipters as gnats, musquitoes, flies. 8. Rhipipters as stylops. 9. Parasites as acara, etc. 10. Thysanurans as lepidotus, flying-lice, etc.
Several other beetles allied to Meloë are known to be parasitic on wild bees, though the accounts of them are fragmentary. The history of Stylops, a beetle allied to Meloë, is no less strange than that of Meloë, and is in some respects still more interesting. On June 18th I captured an Andrena vicina which had been "stylopized."
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