If, with her thirty or forty eggs, the Mylabris had to run the same risks, perhaps not one larva would reach the desired goal. For so strictly limited a family a safer method is needed. The young larva must not get itself carried to the game-basket, or more probably to the honey-pot, at the risk of never reaching it; it must travel on its own legs. Allowing myself to be guided by the logic of things, I shall therefore complete the story of the Twelve-spotted Mylabris as follows.
The mother lays her eggs underground near the spots frequented by the foster-mothers. The recently-hatched young grubs leave their lodgings in September and travel within a restricted radius in search of burrows containing food. The little creature's sturdy legs allow of these underground investigations. The mandibles, which are just as strong, necessarily play their part. The parasite, on forcing its way into the food-pit, finds itself faced with either the egg or the young larva of the Bee. These are competitors, whom it is important to get rid of as quickly as possible. The hooks of the mandibles now come into play, tearing the egg or the defenceless grub. After this act of brigandage, which may be compared with that of the primary larva of the Sitaris ripping open and drinking the contents of the Anthophora's egg, the Meloid, now the sole possessor of the victuals, doffs its battle array and becomes the pot-bellied grub, the consumer of the property so brutally acquired. These are merely suspicions on my part, nothing more. Direct observation will, I believe, confirm them, so close is their connection with the known facts.
Two Zonites, both visitors of the eryngo-heads during the heats of summer, are among the Meloidæ of my part of the country. They are _Zonitis mutica_ and _Z. præusta_. I have spoken of the first in another volume;[10] I have mentioned its pseudochrysalis found in the cells of two Osmiæ, namely, the Three-pronged Osmia, which piles its cells in a dry bramble-stem, and the Three-horned Osmia and also Latreille's Osmia, both of which exploit the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds. The second Zonitis is to-day adding its quota of evidence to a story which is still very incomplete. I have obtained the Burnt Zonitis, in the first place, from the cotton pouches of _Anthidium scapulare_, who, like the Three-toothed Osmia, makes her nests in the brambles; in the second place, from the wallets of _Megachile sericans_, made with little round disks of the leaves of the common acacia; in the third place, from the cells which _Anthidium bellicosum_[11] builds with partitions of resin in the shell of a dead Snail. This last Anthidium is the victim also of the Unarmed Zonitis. Thus we have two closely-related exploiters for the same victim.