160 THE ORDER OF COLEOPTERA. 



Tribe XIX. 



TETEAMEEOUS PLANT-BEETLES. 

 Herbivora tetramera. Phttophaga, Kirby. 



This tribe embraces an extensive series of beetles, mostly of small 

 size, not averaging much above a quarter of an inch in length, and 

 rarely exceeding half an inch, and usually adorned with beautiful and 

 often variegated colors. Like most other beetles of the tetramerous 

 section, the tarsi are clothed with a brush of hairs beneath, and the 

 third, or last joint but one, is usually more or less deeply bilobed. They 

 are distinguished from the snout-beetles in the same section, by the ab- 

 sence of a rostrum or beak ; from the short-horned borers, by their 

 strongly dilated and bilobed tarsi, and from both by the antennae not 

 being knobbed at tbe end. They differ from the other family of tetra- 

 merous beetles — the long-horned wood-borers — in the comparative short- 

 ness of their bodies and of all their members, especially the antennae, 

 which are never tapering as they are in most of the Cerambycidse, but 

 are either filiform or slightly and gradually enlarged towards the tip. 

 Some of the Cerambycidse, however, have filiform antennae, and there 

 seems to be no character by which these two tribes can be absolutely 

 distinguished from each other; and the genus Donacia occupies so in- 

 termediate a position between them that it has been placed sometimes 

 in one, and sometimes in the other. But notwithstanding their close 

 approach in a few of the connecting genera, scarcely any families of 

 beetles are ordinarily more easily distinguished by their general form 

 and aspect. The insects of the present tribe are pre eminently phyto- 

 phagous or plant-eating in their habits, both in the larva and imago 

 states. The only beetles which can be compared with them in this re- 

 spect are the chafers or leaf-eating Lamellicorns in the pentamerous 

 section. We have had occasion, in the introductory i^art of this work, 

 to state some of the differences in the habits of these two plant-eating 

 tribes. 



The Lamellicorns are, for the most part, much larger insects. They 

 feed mostly upon the foliage of trees, in the beetle form, whilst their 

 larvae live under ground upon the roots of grasses and other plants ; and 

 they feed in the evening, clinging to the leaves by means of their long, 

 sharp claws. 



The tetramerous plant-beetles, on the contrary, are comparatively 

 small insects ; they feed mostly upon herbaceous plants, both in the 

 larva and beetle state ; they are diurnal in their habits, and move slowly 

 over the surface of plants, to which they adhere by means of the dense 

 brush of hairs on the under side of their feet. 



