hese
two parts are the future jaws. All this apparatus of lips and jaws is
completely immobile and in a rudimentary condition which is difficult
to describe. They are budding organs, still faint and embryonic. The
labrum and the complicated lamina formed by the lip and the jaws leave
between them a narrow slit in which the mandibles work.

The legs are merely vestiges, for, though they consist of three tiny
cylindrical joints, they are barely a fiftieth of an inch in length.
The creature is unable to make use of them, not only in the liquid
honey upon which it lives, but even on a solid surface. If we take the
larva from the cell and place it on a hard substance, to observe it
more readily, we see that the inordinate protuberance of the abdomen,
by lifting the thorax from the ground, prevents the legs from finding
a support. Lying on its side, the only possible position because of
its conformation, the larva remains motionless or only makes a few
lazy, wriggling movements of the abdomen, without ever stirring its
feeble limbs, which for that matter could not assist it in any way. In
short, the tiny creature of the first stage, so active and alert, is
succeeded by a ventripotent grub, deprived of movement by its very
obesity. Who would recognize in this clumsy, flabby, blind, hideously
pot-bellied creature, with nothing but a sort of stumps for legs, the
elegant pigmy of but a little while back, armour-clad, slender and
provided with highly perfected organs for performing its perilous
journeys?

Lastly, we count nine pairs of stigmata: one pair on the mesothorax
and the rest on the first eight segments of the abdomen. The last
pair, that on the eighth abdominal segment, consists of stigmata so
small that to detect them we have to gather their position by that in
the succeeding states of the larva and to pass a very patient
magnifying-glass along the direction of the other pairs. These are as
yet but vestigial stigmata. The others are fairly large, with pale,
round, flat edges.

If in its first form the Sitaris-larva is organized for action, to
obtain possession of the coveted cell, in its second form it is
organized solely to digest the provisions acquired. Let us take a
glance at its internal structure and in particular at its digestive
apparatus. Here is a strange thing: this apparatus, in which the hoard
of honey amassed by the Anthophora is to be engulfed, is similar in
every respect to that of the adult Sitaris,