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Updated: June 29, 2025
Lastly, with a little attention, I was able to convince myself that within an area of a dozen square yards there was perhaps not a single blade of grass which was not explored by several of these larvæ. I was evidently witnessing the recent emergence of the young Oil-beetles from their maternal lairs.
There are some look at certain of the Oil-beetles exposed to so many chances of destruction that, to save one, they are obliged to procreate a thousand. They seldom enjoy a free meal. Some stray into the houses of hosts whose victuals do not suit them; others find only a ration quite insufficient for their needs; others and these are very numerous find nothing at all.
I was happy and weary; all the creatures came up close and looked at me; there were insects on the trees and oil-beetles crawling on the road. Well met! I said to myself. The feeling of the woods went through and through my senses; I cried for love of it all, and was utterly happy; I was dissolved in thanksgiving.
I could not say positively how long the Oil-beetle remains in the pseudochrysalid form; but, if we consider the very complete analogy between the evolution of the Oil-beetles and that of the Sitares, there is reason to believe that a few pseudochrysalids complete their transformation in the same year, while others, in greater numbers, remain stationary for a whole year and do not attain the state of the perfect insect until the following spring.
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 Pelopaei, the Scoliae use it to manufacture the shellac wherewith the silk of the cocoon is varnished.
In the Sitares, in fact, this cast skin constitutes a closed bag, a pouch completely enveloping the pseudochrysalis; in the Oil-beetles, on the contrary, it is split down the back and pushed to the rear and, consequently, only half-covers the pseudochrysalis.
Despite the presence of Meloe cicatricosus in the dwellings of the Mason-bee, which I so often ransacked in compiling the history of the Sitares, I never saw this insect, at any season of the year, wandering on the perpendicular soil, at the entrance of the corridors, for the purpose of laying its eggs there, as the Sitares do; and I should know nothing of the details of the egg-laying if Godart, de Geer and, above all, Newport had not informed us that the Oil-beetles lay their eggs in the earth.
This shedding of the skin, which leaves the body of the pseudochrysalis uncovered, recalls the mode of transformation observed in the Oil-beetles and is different from that of the Sitares and the Zonites, whose pseudochrysalis remains wholly enveloped in the skin of the secondary larva, a sort of bag which is sometimes loose, sometimes tight and always unbroken.
It was reserved for the distinguished English naturalist Newport to show that this supposed Louse was the first state of the Oil-beetles. Some observations of my own will fill a few lacunæ in the English scientist's monograph. I will therefore sketch the evolution of the Oil-beetles, using Newport's work where my own observations are defective.
Everything assured me that I was on the track of an insect that rivalled the Sitares and the Oil-beetles in the strangeness of its transformations; and, what was a still more precious fact, its occurrence amid the burrows of the Mantis-killer told me that its habits would be wholly different. "It's very hot, my poor Émile; we are both of us pretty done.
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