94 INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



Twenty-nine more of the Leplurians are found in this part of 

 the United States, and some of them are insects of very great 

 beauty ; but, as the habits of their larvae are unknown to me, it 

 would be of little use to insert here descriptions of the beetles 

 only. 



The Buprestians and the Capricorn-beetles seem evidently 

 allied in their habits, both being borers during the greater part of 

 their lives, and living in the trunks and limbs of trees, to which 

 they are more or less injurious in proportion to their numbers. 

 These two groups are widely separated by most naturalists ; but 

 by placing them, with the other groups that intervene, in a circle, 

 the two extremes will be brought together as they should be, if 

 the natural characters bestowed on these insects are regarded in 

 our scientific arrangements. Some of the beetles in these two 

 groups resemble each other closely in their forms and habits. 

 The resemblance, between the slender cylindrical Saperdas and 

 some of the cylindrical Buprestians belonging to the genus Agrilus, 

 is indeed very remarkable, and cannot fail to strike a common 

 observer. Their larvae also are not only very similar in their 

 forms, but they have the same habits ; living in the centre of stems, 

 and devouring the pith. 



The insects, that have passed under consideration in the fore- 

 going part of this essay, spend by far the greater portion of their 

 lives, namely, that wherein they are larvae only, in obscurity, 

 buried in the ground, or concealed within the roots, the stems, or 

 the seeds of plants, where they perform their appointed tasks un- 

 noticed and unknown. Thus the work of destruction goes secretly 

 and silently on, till it becomes manifest by its melancholy conse- 

 quences ; and too late we discover the hidden foes that have dis- 

 appointed the hopes of the husbandman, and ruined those sponta- 

 neous productions of the soil, that constitute so important a source 

 of our comfort and prosperity. 



There still remain several groups of beetles to be described, 

 consisting almost entirely of insects that spend the whole, or the 

 principal part, of their lives upon the leaves of plants, and which, 

 as they derive their nourishment, both in the larva and adult states, 

 from leaves alone, may be called leaf-beetles, or, as they have 

 recently been named, phyllophagous, that is leaf-eating insects. 



