May or in June,
about a month after they are laid. The eggs of the Sitares also are
hatched after the same lapse of time. But the Meloe-larvae, more
greatly favoured, are able to set off immediately in search of the
Bees that are to feed them; while those of the Sitares, hatched in
September, have to wait motionless and in complete abstinence for the
emergence of the Anthophorae the entrance to whose cells they guard. I
will not describe the young Meloe-larva, which is sufficiently well
known, in particular by the description and the diagram furnished by
Newport. To enable the reader to understand what follows, I will
confine myself to stating that this primary larva is a sort of little
yellow louse, long and slender, found in the spring in the down of
different Bees.

How has this tiny creature made its way from the underground lodging
where the eggs are hatched to the fleece of a Bee? Newport suspects
that the young Oil-beetles, on emerging from their natal burrow, climb
upon the neighbouring plants, especially upon the Cichoriceae, and
wait, concealed among the petals, until a few Bees chance to plunder
the flower, when they promptly fasten on to their fur and allow
themselves to be borne away by them. I have more than Newport's
suspicions upon this curious point; my personal observations and
experiments are absolutely convincing. I will relate them as the first
phase of the history of the Bee-louse. They date back to the 23rd of
May, 1858.

A vertical bank on the road from Carpentras to Bedoin is this time the
scene of my observations. This bank, baked by the sun, is exploited by
numerous swarms of Anthophorae, who, more industrious than their
congeners, are in the habit of building, at the entrance to their
corridors, with serpentine fillets of earth, a vestibule, a defensive
bastion in the form of an arched cylinder. In a word, they are swarms
of _A. parietina_. A sparse carpet of turf extends from the edge of
the road to the foot of the bank. The more comfortably to follow the
work of the Bees, in the hope of wresting some secret from them, I had
been lying for a few moments upon this turf, in the very heart of the
inoffensive swarm, when my clothes were invaded by legions of little
yellow lice, running with desperate eagerness through the hairy
thickets of the nap of the cloth. In these tiny creatures, with which
I was powdered here and there as with yellow dust, I soon recognized
an old acquaintance, the you