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 various 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?