June, a fresh
visit to the nests of the Anthophorae furnished me with two larvae
like the foregoing, but much larger. One of them was on the point of
finishing its store of honey, the other still had nearly half left.
The first was put in a place of safety with a thousand precautions,
the second was at once immersed in alcohol.

These larvae are blind, soft, fleshy, yellowish white, covered with a
fine down visible only under the lens, curved into a fish-hook like
the larvae of the Lamellicorns, to which they bear a certain
resemblance in their general configuration. The segments, including
the head, number thirteen, of which nine are provided with
breathing-holes with a pale, oval rim. These are the mesothorax and
the first eight abdominal segments. As in the Sitaris-larvae, the last
pair of stigmata, that of the eighth segment of the abdomen, is less
developed than the rest.

The head is horny, of a light brown colour. The epistoma is edged with
brown. The labrum is prominent, white and trapezoidal. The mandibles
are black, strong, short, obtuse, only slightly curved, sharp-edged
and furnished each with a broad tooth on the inner side. The maxillary
and labial palpi are brown and shaped like very small studs with two
or three joints to them. The antennae, inserted just at the base of
the mandibles, are brown, and consist of three sections: the first is
thick and globular; the two others are much smaller in diameter and
cylindrical. The legs are short, but fairly strong, able to serve the
creature for crawling or digging; they end in a strong black claw. The
length of the larva when fully developed is one inch.

As far as I can judge from the dissection of the specimen preserved in
alcohol, whose viscera were affected by being kept too long in that
liquid, the nervous system consists of eleven ganglia, not counting
the oesophageal collar; and the digestive apparatus does not differ
perceptibly from that of an adult Oil-beetle.

The larger of the two larvae of the 25th of June, placed in a
test-tube with what remained of its provisions, assumed a new form
during the first week of the following month. Its skin split along the
front dorsal half and, after being pushed half back, left partly
uncovered a pseudochrysalis bearing the closest analogy with that of
the Sitares. Newport did not see the larva of the Oil-beetle in its
second form, that which it displays when it is eating the mess of
honey hoarded by the Bees,