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The North-American naturalists have taught us lately that honey is not always the diet of the Blister-beetles: some Meloidæ in the United States devour the packets of eggs laid by the Grasshoppers. This is a legitimate acquisition on their part, not an illegal seizure of the food-stores of others. No one, as far as I am aware, had as yet suspected the true parasitism of a carnivorous Meloid.
The first hatching, that of the normal egg, makes the Meloid go through the larval dimorphism of the Anthrax and the Leucospis. The primary larva finds its way to the victuals; the secondary larva consumes them. The second hatching, that of the pseudochrysalis, reverts to the usual course, so that the insect passes through the three customary forms: larva, nymph, adult.
The thing was taken from the box, dusted by blowing on it and carefully examined. I really had before my eyes the pseudochrysalis of some Meloid. Its shape was unfamiliar to me. No matter: I was an old hand and could not mistake its source.
They speak, moreover, of a precarious, risky parasitism, wherein the Meloid is not sure of finding its food, which the Sitaris finds so deftly, getting itself carried by the Anthophora, after being born at the very entrance to the Bee's galleries and leaving its retreat only to slip into its host's fleece.
After this act of brigandage, which may be compared with that of the primary larva of the Sitaris ripping open and drinking the contents of the Anthophora's egg, the Meloid, now the sole possessor of the victuals, doffs its battle array and becomes the pot-bellied grub, the consumer of the property so brutally acquired. These are merely suspicions on my part, nothing more.
There are the same rigid integuments, of the red of a cough-lozenge or virgin wax; the same cephalic mask, in which the future mouth-parts are represented by faintly marked tubercles; the same thoracic studs, which are the vestiges of the legs; the same distribution of the stigmata. I was therefore firmly convinced that the parasite of the Mantis-hunters could only be a Meloid.
As for the other, it must be eliminated: its extreme rarity in my neighbourhood is a sufficient reason. It is tiresome that the diet of the Aramon Meloid is not known. If I allowed myself to be guided by analogy, I should be inclined to regard Schreber's Cerocoma as a parasite of Tachytes tarsina, who buries her hoards of young Locusts in the high sandy banks.
In that case, the two Cerocomæ would have a similar diet. But I leave it to Dr. Beauregard to elucidate this important characteristic. The riddle is deciphered: the Meloid that eats Praying Mantes is Schaeffer's Cerocoma, of whom I find plenty, in the spring, on the blossoms of the everlasting.
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.
For the second time this stage of development was not exceeded; the one and only nymph that I succeeded in obtaining shrivelled, like those of the year before. Will these two failures, arising no doubt from the overdry atmosphere of my receivers, conceal from us the genus and the species of the Mantis-eating Meloid? Fortunately, no. The riddle is easily solved by deduction and comparison.
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