268 



Beetles 



light, as ornaments, by keeping them alive in little lace pockets on their 

 gowns or attached to delicate golden chains. Two large eye-like spots on 

 the prothorax, and the under side of the hinder part of the abdomen, are 

 the luminous regions. 



The larvae (Fig. 368) are elongate, slender, horny-skinned, brownish 

 or yellowish white, living in the ground or in decaying wood, and popularly 

 and aptly known as wireworms. They have three pairs of short legs, and 

 a stumpy process on the last segment of the body. They feed on the seeds, 

 roots, and other underground parts of plants and do much damage to various 

 crops. Often whole fields of grain are ruined by the attack of wireworms 

 on the planted seeds; meadows often suffer severely, and strawberries lose 



their stolons. The beetles fly about 

 in early summer, depositing their 

 eggs in the ground in grassy, weedy, 

 or plowed land. The larvae soon 

 hatch, dig down into the soil, and feed 

 on roots and seeds for two or three 

 years, when they become full-grown. 

 They pupate in the ground in early 

 fall and the pupae transform to adults 

 before winter, but the beetles do not 

 issue from the ground until the fol- 

 lowing spring. 



Among our largest click-beetles 

 is the eyed elater, Alaus oculatus 

 (Fig. 369), if inch long, blackish 

 with large uneven whitish gray dots, 

 a pepper-and-salt fellow, . Comstock 

 well calls him, with a pair of large 

 white-rimmed velvet-black eye-spots 

 on the prothorax. The large larvae, about 2 inches long, live in decaying 

 wood and are often found in the trunks of old apple-trees. Elater rubricollis, 

 \ inch long, is black with light-red prothorax; E. sangmnipennis, 

 fV inch long, is black with light-red elytra; E. nigricollis, $ inch long, is 

 black with whitish elytra. Athous scapularis, f inch long, is green sh 

 black with the base of the elytra and the hind points of the prothorax clay- 

 yellow. Several species of Corymbetes have the elytra brownish yellow with 

 transverse zigzag black bands; C. hieroglyphicus, % inch long, has two 

 bands; C.hamatus, rather smaller, has one band near the tip. Melanactes 

 piceus, i inch long, is glossy black and its large larva is luminous, 

 strong green light being emitted from a narrow transverse region with 

 expanded ends on each segment. 



FIG. 368. FIG. 369. 



FIG. 368. Larva of a click-beetle, Elater 



acerrimus. (After Schiodte; natural 



size.) 

 FIG. 369. An eyed elater, Alaus oculatus. 



(One and one-half times natural size.) 



