While watching the development
of the Mantis-eating parasite, I took my precautions, in the first
year, to discover its starting-point. By eliminating what was known to
me and seeking among the Meloidae of my neighbourhood for the size
that corresponded with the pseudochrysalids unearthed from the
Tachytes' burrows, I found, as I have said, only Schaeffer's Cerocoma
and the Twelve-spotted Mylabris. I undertook to rear these in order to
obtain their eggs.

As a standard of comparison, the Four-spotted Mylabris, of a more
imposing size, was added to the first two. A fourth, _Zonitis mutica_,
whom I did not need to consult, knowing that she was not connected
with the matter in hand and being familiar with her pseudochrysalis,
completed my school of egg-layers. I proposed, if possible, to obtain
her primary larva. Lastly, I had formerly reared some Cantharides with
the object of observing their egg-laying. In all, five species of
Blister-beetles, reared in a breeding-cage, have left a few lines of
notes in my records.

The method of rearing is of the simplest. Each species is placed under
a large wire-gauze dome standing in a basin filled with earth. In the
middle of the enclosure is a bottle full of water, in which the food
soaks and keeps fresh. For the Cantharides, this is a bundle of
ash-twigs; for the Four-spotted Mylabris, a bunch of bindweed
(_Convolvus arvensis_) or psoralea (_P. biluminosa_), of which the
insect nibbles only the corollae. For the Twelve-spotted Mylabris, I
provide blossoms of the scabious (_Scabiosa maritima_); for the
Zonitis, the full-blown heads of the eryngo (_Eryngium campestre_);
for Schaeffer's Cerocoma, the heads of the Iles d'Hyeres everlasting
(_Helichrysum stoechas_). These three last nibble more particularly
the anthers, more rarely the petals, never the leaves.

A sorry intellect and sorry manners, which hardly repay the minute
cares involved in the rearing. To browse, to love her lord, to dig a
hole in the earth and carelessly to bury her eggs in it: that is the
whole life of the adult Meloid. The dull creature acquires a little
interest only at the moment when the male begins to toy with his mate.
Every species has its own ritual in declaring its passion; and it is
not beneath the dignity of the observer to witness the manifestations,
sometimes so very strange, of the universal Eros, who rules the world
and brings a tremor to even the lowest of the brute creation. This is
the ul