516 PSYCHOLOGICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 



and retired places safe from the attacks of their enemies ; it is, therefore, 

 very rarely that we find not merely their eggs, but even their young larvae. 

 Nor do we know whether the mother furnishes them with food for their 

 first supply, yet it is much to be doubted, as many of their larvse, which as 

 remarkable exceptions do not feed upon animal matter, as, for instance, 

 the larva of Zubrus gibbiis, immediately find in their vicinity a suffi- 

 ciency of food in the young roots of corn *. Thus, also, the eggs of the 

 water beetles may be deposited, without any particular care on the 

 part of the mother, at the bottom of ponds and pools in which the 

 beetles are, for the young larvse will find in the water a sufficiency of 

 other larvae to feed upon. The modes of life vary considerably in the 

 Staphylini in their perfect state, but the majority live upon animal 

 substances. But the larvae are rarely found, and least likely to be so 

 there where we discover the perfect insect ; we may therefore conclude 

 that they also live beneath the earth, where they find their food in con- 

 cealment. The larvse of the carrion beetles are more visible, they are 

 frequently observed in the society of their parents, and we may therefore 

 conclude that the female deposits her egg in the carrion, where the 

 young immediately find nutriment. In the large family of the Lamel- 

 licornia there exists a great difference both in the nature of the food and 

 in their mode of depositing their eggs. The vegetable feeders lay their 

 eggs in the earth, where we find the larvae feeding upon roots, or even 

 upon the soil; the excrement feeders, on the contrary, likewise dig 

 holes in the earth, wherein to deposit their eggs, but they supply their 

 larvse with food, by rolling up balls of excrement, in which they envelope 

 their eggs. We therefore occasionally find the beetle occupied in care- 

 fully pushing this ball along, as we have recently related of Gymno- 

 pleurus pilularius. Copris lunaris, which prefers the dung of sheep, 

 is said to use the individual lumps of it as balls for her eggs, depositing 

 a single one in each, and then burying them. Examples exhibiting 

 greater skill are rare among the Coleoptera, yet Hijdrophilus piceus, 

 according to Migrer, forms a little boat of substances which it fixes 



O O * 



together by means of some viscid fluid, and herein depositing the eggs, 

 closes it, leaving it to its fate. The Capricorn beetles, and bark beetles, 

 which busy themselves with the destruction of dead trees, lay their 

 eggs in and upon them, generally beneath the bark, and it is their 

 larva? which gnaw the wood in all directions. The same is the case 



* Gormar's Magnziu, vol. i. part i. p. 1, &c. 



