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Still, on the actual site of the cells, the coupling is generally performed at the entrance to the galleries of the Anthophoræ; and then neither of the sexes drags about with it the least shred of the shell from which it has emerged. After mating, the two Sitares proceed to clean their legs and antennæ by drawing them between their mandibles; then each goes his own way.
Hardly unwrapped, still dusty from the strenuous labour of deliverance, "the female of the Scolia is seized by the male, who does not even give her time to wash her eyes." Having slept over a year underground, the Sitares, barely rid of their mummy-cases, taste, in the sunlight, a few minutes of love, on the very site of their re-birth; then they die.
By thus attaching themselves to the Anthophoræ the young Sitares evidently intend to get themselves carried, at the opportune moment, into the victualled cells. One might even at first sight believe that they live for some time on the Anthophora's body, just as the ordinary parasites, the various species of Lice, live on the body of the animal that feeds them. But not at all.
How then does it happen that these larvæ, goaded by such an appetite as one would expect after seven or eight months' complete abstinence, instead of all rushing together into the first cell within reach, on the contrary enter the various cells which the Bee is provisioning one at a time and in perfect order? Some action must take place here independent of the Sitares.
Thus the Sitares in the perfect state live long enough only to mate and to lay their eggs. I have never seen one save upon the scene of their loves, which is also that of their death; I have never surprised one browsing on the plants near at hand, so that, though they are provided with a normal digestive apparatus, I have grave reasons to doubt whether they actually take any nourishment whatever.
The young Sitares, which are also very minute, directly they issue from the egg at the entrance of the tubes of the Anthrophorus, remain motionless, assembled in a heap, and pass the whole of the winter in a state of complete abstinence. The young Cigales apparently behave in a very similar fashion.
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.
The post-mortem examination of the only pseudochrysalis in my possession showed me that, similarly to that which happens in the Sitares, no change occurred in the organization of the viscera, notwithstanding the profound transformations which take place externally.
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.
This is the creature's blood. The English, because of its trick of discharging oily blood when on the defensive, call this insect the Oil-beetle. It would not be a particularly interesting Beetle save for its metamorphoses and the peregrinations of its larva, which are similar in every respect to those of the larva of the Sitares.
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