THE FISII-FLY. 79 



recesses and there to pass away the .crreatest portion of its 

 existence. 



Shaped strangely like tlie earwigs, the Eove Beetles have 

 several similar characteristics. A Eove Beetle is hut seldom seen 

 in the open air, any more tlian is an earwig. Tear decaying bark 

 away from a fallen tree-trunk, pull to pieces a fungus, turn 

 over stones that are lying on the ground, dig up loose soil, shake 

 the blossoms of flowers, and in each of these localities speci- 

 mens of Eove Beetles may be found. Excepting the smaller 

 species, which use their wings almost as readily as gnats, and 

 really look very like those insects when flying, the Eove 

 Beetles seldom take to the air in the daytime, so that even the 

 closest observer has but few opportunities of seeing the manner 

 in which the ample wings are folded and packed away under 

 the tiny covering. Whether insects abroad follow in this 

 respect the examples of insects at home, I cannot say, but I 

 never saw either of our two largest species on the wing, and 

 only once sawtheEed Eove Beetle {SfajyJnjUnns Ccesarevs) in the 

 act of alighting. 



Mr. Gosse, in his "Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica," has the 

 following remarks on an insect of this family : — " In Helmet- 

 shells buried for this purpose, I found a Brachelytrous Beetle, 

 which enjoys a very wide geographical range. It is Staphylinvs 

 iCrcophilus) mllosv.s, which is so abxnidant in Newfoundland as 

 to be quite a pest, crawling about and devouring the dying cod 

 fish ; it is there called the Fish-fly. In Canada and in Alabama 

 U.S.) I have also met with it, but rarely, and now I trace it to 

 Jamaica. The Brachelytra, however, are very scarce here, as 

 are the carrion-eating Beetles generally ; their place is probably 

 supplied by the Aura vultures. I only on one other occasion 

 met with this foetid and disgusting Beetle." 



The family of the Oxytelida? is represented by a very small, 

 but a very singular insect, called Megalojos cephnlofes. In length 

 it barely reaches a quarter of an inch, and, until a magnifying 

 glass is brought to bear upon it, appears hardly worth notice. The 

 lens, however, at once shows the extraordinary shape which is 

 reproduced in the illustration. The creature seems aU eyes, these 

 organs being enormous in proportion to the size of the insect, and 

 projecting from the sides of th'^ head very much like two round 



