nce his observations related to young Meloes
held captive in a glass jar, while mine were made in the normal
circumstances, Newport, I was saying, saw Meloes fasten to the body of
a Malachius and stay there without moving, which inclines me to
believe that with Beetles I should have obtained the same results as,
for instance, with a Drone-fly. And I did, in fact, at a later date,
find some Meloe-larvae on the body of a big Beetle, the Golden
Rose-chafer (_Cetonia aurata_), an assiduous visitor of the flowers.

After exhausting the insect class, I put within their reach my last
resource, a large black Spider. Without hesitation they passed from
the flower to the arachnid, made for places near the joints of the
legs and settled there without moving. Everything therefore seems to
suit their plans for leaving the provisional abode where they are
waiting; without distinction of species, genus, or class, they fasten
to the first living creature that chance brings within their reach. We
now understand how it is that these young larvae have been observed
upon a host of different insects and especially upon the early Flies
and Bees pillaging the flowers; we can also understand the need for
that prodigious number of eggs laid by a single Oil-beetle, since the
vast majority of the larvae which come out of them will infallibly go
astray and will not succeed in reaching the cells of the Anthophorae.
Instinct is at fault here; and fecundity makes up for it.

But instinct recovers its infallibility in another case. The Meloes,
as we have seen, pass without difficulty from the flower to the
objects within their reach, whatever these may be, smooth or hairy,
living or inanimate. This done, they behave very differently,
according as they have chanced to invade the body of an insect or some
other object. In the first case, on a downy Fly or Butterfly, on a
smooth-skinned Spider or Beetle, the larvae remain motionless after
reaching the point which suits them. Their instinctive desire is
therefore satisfied. In the second case, in the midst of the nap of
cloth or velvet, or the filaments of cotton, or the flock of the
everlasting, or, lastly, on the smooth surface of a leaf or a straw,
they betray the knowledge of their mistake by their continual coming
and going, by their efforts to return to the flower imprudently
abandoned.

How then do they recognize the nature of the object to which they have
just moved? How is it that this object,