326 TRANSFORMATIONS OF INSECTS. 



the emission of a fragrant odour not unlike that of otto of 

 roses. 



The exuberant vegetation of tropical countries can well afford 

 to be checked by the ravages of insects, and some of the largest 

 trees, which require much heat and damp for their growth, are 

 more or less destroyed by some of the largest larvae which are 

 known. Thus in Guiana there is an immense beetle called the 

 Titan {Titamis giganteiis), whose larva gnaws and makes gal- 

 leries in the largest trees, and its size almost appears to bear some 

 relation to the magnitude of its food. Again, in India, there 

 are beetles with long mandibles which make them look almost 

 like stag beetles, but the antennae are enormously long and 

 spined at each joint, and they have very large larvae. The larva 

 of AcantJiopJiorus serraticornis lives under the bark of large trees 

 in the neighbourhood of Pondicherry. It does not come into 

 the light, and, like many other wood-borers, it forms galleries 

 within the wood, and finally makes a cocoon of enormous dimen- 

 sions out of the vegetable tissue. The engraving exhibits the 

 beetle upon the outside of a tree, the larva being under the bark, 

 and a great cocoon in a kind of gallery. 



The mimosa trees in the West Indies suffer greatly from a 

 beetle which is called Lamia amputator. The larva bores and 

 excavates the branches and delicate saplings of the trees, and under- 

 goes its metamorphosis in them. This mischief having been done, 

 the coup de grace is given by the perfect insect, for the beetle has 

 a fancy for gnawing round the branches in a circular line, so as 

 to cut them off completely. An allied species {Oiicideres vomicosci) 

 does very much the same sort of thing. M. Houllet, now the 

 head gardener of the tropical department of the Musee d'Histoire 

 Naturelle in Paris, once lived in the environs of Rio Janeiro, and 

 every night he heard the sound of falling branches of trees belong- 

 ing to the Acacia lebbeck. He found on examination that these 

 branches were sawn all round in a circular direction, but their 

 central part, or pith, was not touched, so that the branches 

 broke by their own weight or by the simple force of the wind. 

 The mischief was put down to the evil dispositions of the slaves 

 of the house, but M; Houllet discovered a beetle upon a branch 

 which had been thus cut, and it soon became evident that this 



