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By eliminating what was known to me and seeking among the Meloidæ of my neighbourhood for the size that corresponded with the pseudochrysalids unearthed from the Tachytes' burrows, I found, as I have said, only Schaeffer's Cerocoma and the Twelve-spotted Mylabris. I undertook to rear these in order to obtain their eggs.
The red Crioceris fed, though with a very scornful tooth, on the foliage of the asparagus, the favourite dish of the Field Crioceris and the Twelve-spotted Crioceris.
Of all the batches of eggs collected, one alone hatched. The rest were probably sterile, a suspicion corroborated by the lack of pairing in the breeding-cage. Laid at the end of July, the eggs of the Twelve-spotted Mylabris began to hatch on the 5th of September. The primary larva of this Meloid is still unknown, so far as I am aware; and I shall describe it in detail.
Allowing myself to be guided by the logic of things, I shall therefore complete the story of the Twelve-spotted Mylabris as follows. The mother lays her eggs underground near the spots frequented by the foster-mothers. The recently-hatched young grubs leave their lodgings in September and travel within a restricted radius in search of burrows containing food.
The most exposed to parasites is the Field Crioceris, whose larva lives in the open air, without any sort of protection. Next comes the Twelve-spotted Crioceris, who is established in the asparagus-berry from her early infancy. The most favoured is the Lily-beetle, who, while a grub, makes an ulster of her excretions.
This is what the Twelve-spotted Crioceris does, occupying the same quarters as the Field Crioceris, from whom she differs in size, being rather larger, and still more in her costume, which is rusty red all over, with twelve black spots distributed symmetrically on the wing-cases.
The Twelve-spotted Mylabris and the Four-spotted Mylabris present differences quite as pronounced in this respect. The cause which makes a dwarf or a giant of the same insect, irrespective of its sex, can be only the smaller or greater quantity of food.
When everything seems to foretell a quiet life, a pigmy among pigmies appears, charged with the express duty of exterminating an insect which is protected first by the casket of the berry and next by the shell, the underground work of the grub. To eat the Twelve-spotted Crioceris is its mission in life, its special function. When and how does it deliver its attack? I do not know.
The grub of the Twelve-spotted Crioceris is a dull white, with an interrupted black scarf on the first segment of the thorax. This sedentary creature has none of the talents of the acrobat grazing on the swaying foliage of the asparagus; it cannot take a grip with its posterior, turned into a prehensile finger.
In the middle of July, at the time when the Twelve-spotted Crioceris comes up from under the ground in the adult form, my rearing-jars yield me swarms of a very small Gall-fly, a slender, graceful, blue-black Chalcid, without any visible boring-tool. Has the puny creature a name? Have the nomenclators catalogued it?
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