rious Bees, provided that the eggs and the honey do not
differ too greatly from the Anthophora's. I should not, for example,
count on being successful with the cells of the three-horned Osmia,
who shares the Anthophora's quarters: her egg is short and thick; and
her honey is yellow, odourless, solid, almost a powder and very
faintly flavoured.

CHAPTER V
HYPERMETAMORPHOSIS

By a Machiavellian stratagem the primary larva of the Oil-beetle or
the Sitaris has penetrated the Anthophora's cell; it has settled on
the egg, which is its first food and its life-raft in one. What
becomes of it once the egg is exhausted?

Let us, to begin with, go back to the larva of the Sitaris. By the end
of a week the Anthophora's egg has been drained dry by the parasite
and is reduced to the envelope, a shallow skiff which preserves the
tiny creature from the deadly contact of the honey. It is on this
skiff that the first transformation takes place, whereafter the larva,
which is now organized to live in a glutinous environment, drops off
the raft into the pool of honey and leaves its empty skin, split along
the back, clinging to the pellicle of the egg. At this stage we see
floating motionless on the honey a milk-white atom, oval, flat and a
twelfth of an inch long. This is the larva of the Sitaris in its new
form. With the aid of a lens we can distinguish the fluctuations of
the digestive canal, which is gorging itself with honey; and along the
circumference of the flat, elliptical back we perceive a double row of
breathing-pores which, thanks to their position, cannot be choked by
the viscous liquid. Before describing the larva in detail we will wait
for it to attain its full development, which cannot take long, for the
provisions are rapidly diminishing.

The rapidity however is not to be compared with that with which the
gluttonous larvae of the Anthophora consume their food. Thus, on
visiting the dwellings of the Anthophorae for the last time, on the
25th of June, I found that the Bee's larvae had all finished their
rations and attained their full development, whereas those of the
Sitares, still immersed in the honey, were, for the most part, only
half the size which they must finally attain. This is yet another
reason why the Sitares should destroy an egg which, were it to
develop, would produce a voracious larva, capable of starving them in
a very short time. When rearing the larvae myself in test-tubes, I
have found tha