Success responded amply to our zeal. We found a goodly number of pseudochrysalids. More often still, we unearthed larvae which were busy eating the Mantes, the rations of the Tachytes. Are these really the larvae that turn into the pseudochrysalids? It seems very probable, but there is room for doubt. Rearing them at home will dispel the mists of probability and replace them by the light of certainty. But that is all: I have not a vestige of the perfect insect to inform me of the nature of the parasite. The future, let us hope, will fill this gap. Such was the result of the first trench opened in the heap of sand. Later searches enriched my harvest a little, without furnishing me with fresh data. Let us now proceed to examine my double find. And first of all the pseudochrysalis, which put me on the alert. It is a motionless, rigid body, of a waxen yellow, smooth, shiny, curved like a fish-hook towards the head, which is inflected. Under a very powerful magnifying-glass the surface is seen to be strewn with very tiny points which are slightly raised and shinier than the surface. There are thirteen segments, including the head. The dorsal surface is convex, the ventral surface flat. A blunt ridge divides the two surfaces. The three thoracic segments bear each a pair of tiny conical nipples, of a deep rusty red, signs of the future legs. The stigmata are very distinct, appearing as specks of a deeper red than the rest of the integuments. There is one pair, the largest, on the second segment of the thorax, almost on the line dividing it from the first segment. Then follow eight pairs, one on each segment of the abdomen except the last, making in all nine pairs of stigmata. The last pair, that of the eighth abdominal segment, is the smallest. The anal extremity displays no peculiarity. The cephalic mask comprises eight cone-shaped tubercles, dark red like the tubercles of the legs. Six of these are arranged in two lateral rows; the others are between the two rows. In each row of three nipples, the one in the middle is the largest; it no doubt corresponds with the mandibles. The length of this organism varies greatly, fluctuating between 8 and 15 millimetres.[1] Its width is from 3 to 4 millimetres.[2] [Footnote 1: .312 to .585 inch.--_Translator's Note_.] [Footnote 2: .117 to .156 inch.--_Translator's Note_.] Apart from the general configuration, it will be seen that we have here the strikingly characteristic appearance of the pseudochrysalids of the Sitares, Oil-beetles and Zonites. There are the same rigid integuments, of the red of a cough-lozenge or virgin wax; the same cephalic mask, in which the future mouth-parts are represented by faintly marked tubercles; the same thoracic studs, which are the vestiges of the legs; the same distribution of the stigmata. I was therefore firmly convinced that the parasite of the Mantis-hunters could only be a Meloid.