288 Beetles 



appeared in California near Menlo Park in iS68 on orange-trees, and in a 

 few years had become so abundant and widely spread over the state that 

 it seriously threatened the extinction of the great orange industry. In 1888 

 a few live Vedalias (altogether about 500 sj)eciniens in five separate lots) 

 were brought from Australia, put on trees infested by the fluted scale, and 

 by helpful scattering of the progeny of these original emigrants this lady- 

 bird species was soon distributed to all scale-infested localities. In a few 

 years it had the pest completely under control, and has ever since remained 

 its master. And California continues to grow Washington oranges. 



SECTION HETEROMERA. 



This section includes those beetles which have the front and middle 

 feet with fi\e tarsal segments, the hind feet with four. It is a heterogeneous 

 assemblage, including, besides two large families of widely differing aspect 

 and habits, a number of small ones of obscure, little known, and mostly 

 uncommon species of small size, which present a wide variety of structure 

 and life-history. The two principal families can be distinguished by the 

 following diagnosis: 



Head without distinct neck, narrower than thorax and more or less inserted in it; 

 body-wall hard; color usually black. 



(Darkling ground -beetles.) Tenebrionid.e. 



Head as wide as prothorax, and attached to it by a visible neck; body soft and 



elytra flexible; colors often diversified, frequently metallic blue or green 



(Blister- and oil-beetles.) Meloid.e. 



The common ground-beetles of the North and E.ast are the swift preda- 

 ceous Carabidaj; any stone or log turned over 

 will reveal them. In the dry warm western jjlains 

 ■iM I and southwestern semi-desert states, however, the 



/.^tIMS. \ slower vegetable-feeding TenebrionidK are the com- 



^V'Jl iHN^ » mon ground-beetles. The most familiar of them on 

 the Pacific coast are large, awkwardly moving, shin- 

 ing black pinacate bugs, Elcodcs (Fig. 399) which, 

 when disturbed by the turning over of their covering 

 stone, stand on their fore legs and head and emit an 

 ill - smelling fluid from the tip of the abdomen. 

 Fig. 309,— Pinacate bug, They have no wings, and the thick horny elytra arc 

 Eleodes sp. (Natural grown fast to the back. .Ml the rest of the body 

 ^'^'^•' is similarly armor-plated, and the collector has to use 



an awl to make a hole through the body-wall for pinning up his specimens. 



