INSECT VARIETY. 137 



South Chili/^ says Dr. Darwin, " is bold and pugnacious, and 

 when threatened on any side, he faces round, opening his great 

 jaws, and at the same time stridulating loudly. ^'' The Melo- 

 lonthida or chafers add several instrumentalists to the insect 

 choir. In many, the active organ of stridulation consists in 

 two curved depressions, furnished with oblique irregular limse, 

 often little more than roughnesses, superiorly situated on the 

 last dorsal arc but one ; and the rare mottled Melolontha Fullo 

 executes an intense creaking by rubbing the abdomen against 

 the elytra. The musical apparatus is also slightly marked in 

 either sex of the common May Cockchafers, Melolontha vulgaris, 

 and in their summer relative, solstifialis, as in Anomala, Koppe, 

 and other genera. 



But among the Melolonthidae the stridulation of Serica is 

 exceptional. Herr Westring being convinced the delicate S. 

 brminea, L., when struggling between his fingers at times pro- 

 duced a soft creaking, and tracing this to the thorax, was led 

 ta examine the inner side of the spoon- shaped under-part or 

 presternum, and in this singular situation he found a single 

 elongate lima, which was evidently capable of being moved 

 over the thin ridge on the metasternum's fore margin — both 

 structures being blackened and indurated (Plate VI., Fig. 12, I.). 



The common green chafers of Australasian forest clearings, 

 Lomaptera, it is stated by Dr. Sharp, probably stridulate as the 

 orthoptei'ous Pneumora, by means of a somewhat raised space, 

 thickly set with fine slightly-curved limaform lines on the 

 second and third abdominal segments, from which a loud sound 

 may be elicited by moving the inner surface of the femur 

 covered with coarser and less regular lines back^vards and for- 

 wards over their superficies. Lastly, Eiichirius longimanus, a 

 South American beetle, makes whilst moving a low hissing 

 by the protrusion and contraction of the abdomen, due to a 

 narrow rasp running along the sutural margin of each elytron ; 

 and the Ne-arctic genus Gijmnodm emits a musky smell, and 

 stridulates on seizure. In our Rose Beetle scarcely perceptible 

 indications of lirase, as in the cockchafer, may be seen. The 

 spontaneity of music we here see in some of the Lamellicorn 

 is common to the stercorarioiis and phytophagous kinds. 



I took, at the commencement of July, on a willow sapling 



