INSECT VARIETY. 43 



in which a clear caustic fluid wells up, and this applied to the 

 tenderer portions of the hiiman system, as the cheek or eyelid, 

 produces irritation and inflammation. When the caterpillar is 

 touched it draws in its hinder segments, and this fluid is trans- 

 mitted by ejection or e vaporisation to the hairy armature, which 

 it bathes in a clammy and baleful dew. Other hirsute palmer 

 worms are similarly irritating" ; many examples occur among the 

 Saturni(lid(e and Bombi/cida, but in the case of the Gold-tail 

 Moth, as Mr. Meldola has pointed out, we have a singular 

 example of a caterpillar feeding on the non-poisonous plants of 

 our hedgerows — sloe, apple, oak, &c. — elaborating a noxious 

 secretion by a chemico-physiological process. 



Some veffetable-feeding: beetles on seizure exude rich amber 

 drops that conglobe at the leg joints. We notice this in the 

 portly Oil Beetles Proscarabceus and Meloe, that in spring 

 consume the spotted arum at the wayside, as also in the 

 aphidivorus pied Ladybirds, and ash-feeding Spanish Flies, 

 and in the latter these buttery drops have the noxious roast- 

 beef taint of the yellow-flowered Sand Mustard. Others of 

 these beetles drop saliva, as the Bloody-nosed Beetle, so common 

 on hedgerow bedstraw. These drops have a rich crimson 

 colour, due, it has been suggested, to alizarine derived from the 

 food plant ; and in another Timarcha, somewhat smaller, I 

 found in the Isola di Capri, they were of a clear amber tint. 

 Other kinds exude a milky, glutinous fluid from the pores of the 

 dermis at all parts of the body, as the genus Brachi/notus, found 

 on maple stumps in Canada, or our own willow-loving Musk 

 Beetles, with certain allied long-horned dryads, although some 

 say, curiously enough, the smell of tea roses or musk in these 

 waspish creatures proceeds from metathoracic glandular organs. 

 One of the lamellicorn beetles [Osmoderma) perfumes the trees 

 it has crawled over with a smell of Russian leather, and the 

 scarce, bumble-like Trichius, with the much-alike Burying 

 Beetles, are redolent of musk ; but other carrion beetles, as the 

 Silphidse, disgorge as we handle them nauseous brownish saliva, 

 in the fashion of vultures, with the taint of sulphuretted 

 hydrogen. 



On alarm, communicated by touch or sight. Ground Beetles 

 and Staphylinidae eject volatile corrosive secretions from long 



