ld has carefully described the metamorphoses of
Meloe, does not mention this stage in its development, which Fabre calls
"pseudo-chrysalis." It is motionless, the head is mask-like, without
movable appendages, and the feet are represented by six tubercles. This
is more properly speaking the semi-pupa, and the mature pupa grows
beneath its mask-like form, which is finally moulted. This form,
however, according to Fabre, changes its skin and turns into a third
larva form (Fig. 37). After some time it assumes its true pupa form
(Fig. 38), and finally moults this skin to appear as a beetle.

Fabre has also, in a lively and well-written account, given a history of
Sitaris, a European beetle, somewhat resembling Meloe. He states that
Sitaris lays its eggs near the entrance of bees' nests, and at the very
moment that the bee lays her egg in the honey cell, the flattened, ovate
Sitaris larva drops from the body of the bee upon which it has been
living, and feasts upon the contents of the freshly laid egg. After
eating this delicate morsel it devours the honey in the cells of the bee
and changes into a white, cylindrical, nearly footless grub, and after
it is full-fed, and has assumed a supposed "pupa" state, the skin,
without bursting, incloses a kind of hard "pupa" skin, which is very
similar in outline to the former larva, within whose skin is found a
whitish larva which directly changes into the true pupa. In a succeeding
state this pupa in the ordinary way changes to a beetle which belongs to
the same group of Coleoptera as Meloe. We cannot but think, from
observations made on the humble bee, the wasp, two species of moths and
several other insects, that this "hyper-metamorphosis" is not so
abnormal a mode of insect metamorphosis as has been supposed, and that
the changes of these insects, made beneath the skin of the mature larva
before assuming the pupa state, are almost as remarkable as those of
Meloe and Sitaris, though less easily observed than they. Several other
beetles allied to Meloe are known to be parasitic on wild bees, though
the accounts of them are fragmentary.

THE STYLOPS PARASITE.

The history of Stylops, a beetle allied to Meloe, is no less strange
than that of Meloe, and is in some respects still more interesting. On
June 18th I captured an Andrena vicina which had been "stylopized." On
looking at my capture I saw a pale reddish-brown triangular mark on the
bee's abdomen; this was the flattened head