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,[2] de Geer[3] and,
above all, Newport had not informed us that the Oil-beetles lay their
eggs in the earth. According to the last-named author, the various
Oil-beetles whom he had the opportunity of observing dig, among the
roots of a clump of grass, in a dry soil exposed to the sun, a hole a
couple of inches deep which they carefully fill up after laying their
eggs there in a heap. This laying is repeated three or four times
over, at intervals of a few days during the same season. For each
batch of eggs the female digs a special hole, which she does not fail
to fill up afterwards. This takes place in April and May.

[Footnote 2: Jean Baptiste Godart (1775-1823), the principal editor of
_L'Histoire naturelle des lepidopteres de France_.--_Translator's
Note_.]

[Footnote 3: Baron Karl de Geer (1720-1778), the Swedish entomologist,
author of _Memoires pour servir a l'histoire des insectes_
(1752-1778).--_Translator's Note_.]

The number of eggs laid in a single batch is really prodigious. In the
first batch, which, it is true, is the most prolific of all, _Meloe
proscarabaeus_, according to Newport's calculations, produces the
astonishing number of 4,218 eggs, which is double the number of eggs
laid by a Sitaris. And what must the number be, when we allow for the
two or three batches that follow the first! The Sitares, entrusting
their eggs to the very corridors through which the Anthophora is bound
to pass, spare their larvae a host of dangers which the larvae of the
Meloe have to run, for these, born far from the dwellings of the Bees,
are obliged to make their own way to their hymenopterous
foster-parents. The Oil-beetles, therefore, lacking the instinct of
the Sitares, are endowed with incomparably greater fecundity. The
richness of their ovaries atones for the insufficiency of instinct by
proportioning the number of germs in accordance with the risks of
destruction. What transcendent harmony is this, which thus holds the
scales between the fecundity of the ovaries and the perfection of
instinct!

The hatching of the eggs takes place at the end of