ontrary are very scarce in
the same nests. Circumstances, however, favoured me more than I dared
hope and, after six hours' labour, in which the pick played a great
part, I became the possessor, by the sweat of my brow, of a
considerable number of cells occupied by Sitares and two other cells
appropriated by Meloes.

While my enthusiasm had not had time to cool at the sight, momentarily
repeated, of a young Sitaris perched upon an Anthophora's egg floating
in the centre of the little pool of honey, it might well have burst
all restraints on beholding the contents of one of these cells. On the
black, liquid honey a wrinkled pellicle is floating; and on this
pellicle, motionless, is a yellow louse. The pellicle is the empty
envelope of the Anthophora's egg; the louse is a Meloe-larva.

The story of this larva becomes self-evident. The young Meloe leaves
the down of the Bee at the moment when the egg is laid; and, since
contact with the honey would be fatal to the grub, it must, in order
to save itself, adopt the tactics followed by the Sitaris, that is to
say, it must allow itself to drop on the surface of the honey with the
egg which is in the act of being laid. There, its first task is to
devour the egg which serves it for a raft, as is attested by the empty
envelope on which it still remains; and it is after this meal, the
only one that it takes so long as it retains its present form, that it
must commence its long series of transformations and feed upon the
honey amassed by the Anthophora. This was the reason of the complete
failure both of my attempts and of Newport's to rear the young
Meloe-larvae. Instead of offering them honey, or larvae, or nymphs, we
should have placed them on the eggs recently laid by the Anthophora.

On my return from Carpentras, I meant to try this method, together
with that of the Sitares, with which I had been so successful; but, as
I had no Meloe-larvae at my disposal and could not obtain any save by
searching for them in the Bees' fleece, the Anthophora-eggs were all
discovered to have hatched in the cells which I brought back from my
expedition, when I was at last able to find some. This lost experiment
is little to be regretted, for, since the Meloes and the Sitares
exhibiting the completest similarity not only in habits but also in
their method of evolution, there is no doubt whatever that I should
have succeeded. I even believe that this method may be attempted with
the cells of va