INSECT VARIETY. 145 



designs to oviposit on, the various trees some are allotted to, 

 the various sunny flowers others frequent, their rich bold orna- 

 mentation, or cold licheny garb, their amours, music, pugnacity, 

 and gregariousness. A very large number o£ Longicorns are 

 musical. Many individuals of the groups Cerambycidae, Kirby, 

 and Lepturidse, Leach, creak on seizure ; some aspire to the pheno- 

 mena of love and rivalry. I remember, as it were yesterday, 

 watching how the apterous Boricardion Pi/renaum would climb 

 the heated walls and trees in the Toulouse Botanic Garden 

 illuminated by the hectic sunshine of April, and commencing to 

 nod its prothorax, send forth a creaking, that on cessation would 

 call forth quite a chorus in response from others of these beetles 

 similarly perched in the neighbourhood. The Harlequin Beetle 

 [Acrocimis longimamcs) in the same fashion betrays its retreat 

 by a rather loud noise, which it produces by the friction of the 

 thorax. The Prionida, Leach, however, are erroneously noticed 

 as stridulators. 



Whether our present group of Ceravihycidce, which includes 

 genera * which do not stridulate as the rest, is a natural group, 

 or whether the musicians will have to stand out from among 

 them when their biology is more fully investigated, posterity 

 will decide. The sound colour of their stridor has been compared 

 with various inarticulate expressions, such as the braying of an 

 ass, and the squeaks of a mouse ; or to others artificially pro- 

 duced, as the scraping of a fiddle-bow, or rasping of a saw. 

 They all produce their sharp chirp (Plate V., Fig. 2a, 2b) by 

 rubbing the posterior saddle-shaped, inflexed, overlap of the 

 prothorax (Fig. 2b) on the front edge of the scutum of the 

 mesothorax [l). Sometimes in the giants of the race the whole 

 dorsal surface of the prescutum shows interferential colours, 

 being covered with extremely close, deep, and minute transverse 

 striae, while in the smaller kinds the lima shrinks to a central 

 elevation of triangular, semicircular, or lenticular outline. The 

 musical strise are invariably minute and numei-ous, causing 

 the lima to appear glossy to the naked eye. In Ceramhyx 

 her OS among the largest species of the European forests, 



* Cal/idium, Dorcasomus, Vesperus, Necydalis, and Molorchus (excepting 

 M. major, L.) . 



K 



