DARKLING-BEETLES. 



173 



tries, in fact in all dark places where flour and meal is kept for 

 a long- time. These insects cause no serious injury, but are far 

 from pleasant to have around. Their larva?, best known by the 

 name of "meal-worms," are sometimes bred purposely by bird- 

 fanciers as winter food for insectivorous singing-birds ; they are 

 raised in immense numbers in warm boxes partly filled with bran, 

 and in such places they undergo all their metamorphoses. 



The beetles themselves are brownish, flattened, with a square 

 thorax and deeply ridged wing-covers. The larva is a cylindrical, 

 hard-shelled worm, usually of a polished waxy yellowish-brown 



Fig. 179. — Echocerus maxillosus. Fab. — After Division of Entomology. U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture. 



color, and terminates in a two-pointed posterior segment; it re- 

 sembles the larva of the wire-worm in many ways, but is very 

 much stouter. 



A dark, almost black and more opaque beetle is the T.obscurus 

 Fab., which is found in similar locations. Both are pests of 

 granaries and mills, and are found in almost every region of the 

 globe, being carried there by commerce. 



A much smaller species, the Echocerus maxillosus Fab., is 

 shown in Fig. 179. It is of a brown color, and further south is 

 equally as much at home in old and neglected flour. 



