een invaded when I lay down at the foot of the bank. It was
impossible that all these larvae, the tale of whose alarming thousands
I would not venture to define, should form one family and recognize a
common mother; despite what Newport has told us of the Oil-beetles'
astonishing fecundity, I could not believe this, so great was their
multitude.

Though the green carpet was continued for a considerable distance
along the side of the road, I could not detect a single Meloe-larva
elsewhere than in the few square yards lying in front of the bank
inhabited by the Mason-bee. These larvae therefore could not have come
far; to find themselves near the Anthophorae they had had no long
pilgrimage to make, for there was not a sign of the inevitable
stragglers and laggards that follow in the wake of a travelling
caravan. The burrows in which the eggs were hatched were therefore in
that turf opposite the Bees' abode. Thus the Oil-beetles, far from
laying their eggs at random, as their wandering life might lead one to
suppose, and leaving their young to the task of approaching their
future home, are able to recognize the spots haunted by the
Anthophorae and lay their eggs in the near neighbourhood of those
spots.

With such a multitude of parasites occupying the composite flowers in
close proximity to the Anthophora's nests, it is impossible that the
majority of the swarm should not become infested sooner or later. At
the time of my observations, a comparatively tiny proportion of the
starving legion was waiting on the flowers; the others were still
wandering on the ground, where the Anthophorae very rarely alight; and
yet I detected the presence of several Meloe-larvae in the thoracic
down of nearly all the Anthophorae which I caught and examined.

I have also found them on the bodies of the Melecta- and
Coelioxys-bees,[4] who are parasitic on the Anthophorae. Suspending
their audacious patrolling before the galleries under construction,
these spoilers of the victualled cells alight for an instant on a
camomile-flower and lo, the thief is robbed! A tiny, imperceptible
louse has slipped into the thick of the downy fur and, at the moment
when the parasite, after destroying the Anthophora's egg, is laying
her own upon the stolen honey, will creep upon this egg, destroy it in
its turn and remain sole mistress of the provisions. The mess of honey
amassed by the Anthophora will thus pass through the hands of three
owners and remain f