Thus, to the ordinary metamorphoses which make a Beetle pass successively through the stages of larva, nymph and perfect insect, the Meloidae add others which repeatedly transform the larva's exterior, without introducing any modification of its viscera. This mode of development, which preludes the customary entomological forms by the multiple transfigurations of the larva, certainly deserves a special name: I suggest that of _hypermetamorphosis_. Let us now recapitulate the more prominent facts of this essay. The Sitares, the Meloes, the Zonites and apparently other Meloidae, possibly all of them, are in their earliest infancy parasites of the harvesting Bees. The larva of the Meloidae, before reaching the nymphal state, passes through four forms, which I call the _primary larva_, the _secondary larva_, the _pseudochrysalis_ and the _tertiary larva_. The passage from one of these forms to the next is effected by a simple moult, without any changes in the viscera. The primary larva is leathery and settles on the Bee's body. Its object is to get itself carried into a cell filled with honey. On reaching the cell, it devours the Bee's egg; and its part is played. The secondary larva is soft and differs completely from the primary larva in its external characteristics. It feeds upon the honey contained in the usurped cell. The pseudochrysalis is a body deprived of all movement and clad in horny integuments which may be compared with those of the pupae and chrysalids. On these integuments we see a cephalic mask without distinct or movable parts, six tubercles indicating the legs and nine pairs of breathing-holes. In the Sitares the pseudochrysalis is enclosed in a sort of sealed pouch and in the Zonites in a tight-fitting bag formed of the skin of the secondary larva. In the Meloes it is simply half-sheathed in the split skin of the secondary larva. The tertiary larva reproduces almost exactly the peculiarities of the second; it is enclosed, in the Sitares and probably also the Zonites, in a double vesicular envelope formed of the skin of the secondary larva and the slough of the pseudochrysalis. In the Meloes, it is half-enclosed in the split integuments of the pseudochrysalis, even as these, in their turn, are half-enclosed in the skin of the secondary larva. From the tertiary larva onwards the metamorphoses follow their habitual course, that is to say, this larva becomes a nymph; and this nymph the perfect insect. CHAPTER VI CEROCOMAE, MYLABRES AND ZONITES