The family Meloidae is best known among entomologists because of its hypermetamorphic development, but at the same time a lack of detail has caused some misunderstanding of this type of development. It is understood that each species has two or more larval types occurring in sequence, and that the larval stage wholly or partly is predacious on eggs of other insects. The combination of different larval forms and specialized predatism has influenced various authors to express or imply a cause-and-effect relationship. For example, Packard (1883), in an article on the genealogy of insects, proposed this relationship when he said that in the meloid metamorphosis, we have a clue to the probable origin of the different types of coleopterous larvae, and that the changes in the Meloidae typify the successive steps in the degradation of form which characterizes the series of coleopterous larvae from the Carabidae down to the Curculionidae and Scolytidae. Milliken (1921), and Ingram and Douglas (1932) have touched on this phase of the significance of the metamorphosis of this family.