INSECT VAKIETY. 147 



coloured Lepturida peevishly stridulates as we draw it out of 

 some favourite and rank blossom, where, plunged head-fore- 

 most, it is idly toj^ing- the tepid nectaries, emitting an acrid, 

 waspish note, acute as a thimble scratched by a needle : 

 the little orange Lepiiira livida, Fab., for example, when we 

 snatch it from the composite head of a sea-pink on the Do^vns ; 

 and Dr. Landois tells us he has watched some of these minuter 

 beetles nod as if creaking, yet their notes were too subtle for his 

 ears ; which we are also given to infer from the fact that the 

 fine-spun musical organ in Grammoptera rujicornis, Fab., has a 

 lima only "375 Mm. long, with 113 furrows — one-tenth of the 

 dimensions it attains in C. heros. Here a specially-constructed 

 stethoscope might be employed with advantage. 



Among the small fauna of the VhijtopJiaga, that appear as 

 by magic towards the close of summer to aid the defoliation 

 of certain trees and shrubs, on whose leafy hair, dank with 

 honey-dew, they depend, like lucid drops from the rainbow 

 borrowing lustre of the jewel casket, native musicians, despite 

 the gregariousness of the individuals, are seldom noticed. In 

 Germany there is a beetle of renown with the younger popu- 

 lation, who call it " Musikant.^^ Its grubs appear annually on 

 the white Persian lily, and soon disfigure its immaculate chalices 

 with excrement. These eventually become beetles of a coral 

 red [Crioceris nierdigera, L.), which, when seized in the hand, 

 complain with a sharpish sound (Plate IV., Fig. 10). Others 

 of their congeners said to be musical are better known in this 

 island, such as the small yellow and black Asparagus Beetle, 

 [C. asparagi, L.), that makes its dehiit on the reed-seeding 

 asparagus, the C. melanopa, L., and the metallic blue C. cyanella, 

 that holds gormandising parties on the dark alder-leaf. None 

 of these, though, perform very readily, and I am not able to add 

 any confirmation to the statements. 



Westring ascribes the stridulation of these genera to the lower- 

 ing and raising of the extremity of the abdomen, which works 

 the upper surface of the anal segment against the tij)s of the 

 elytra ; and in his second pajjcr thus describes the lima — an appa- 

 rently smooth, but really striated, elevated surface (Plate IV., 

 Fig. 10, l), placed at the anterior edge of the anal segment., 

 which is either oval, transversely semi-circular, or semi-oval, 

 K 2 



