﻿8 Major Parry's Catalogue 



Luc ANUS CERVUS, Linnaeus. 



The earliest figure representing this species with which I am 

 acquainted is to be met with in Gesner's History of Foor-footed 

 Beasts, Serpents and Insects, published by Edward Topsel, in 

 London, IG08. The description is so quaint that I have deemed 

 it not uninteresting to republish it in exlenso. 



♦' Beetles are some greater, some less, the great ones some 

 have horns, others without horns. Those that have horns some 

 are like Hartshorns, other have Bub horns, some have horns 

 in their noses : we shall speak of them all in order. The 

 \WaTvKEpu)Q, or Hartshorn beetle, is called Lucanus by Nigidius ; 

 as riiny witnesseth. Some call it the Bull, others the Flying 

 Stag : Hesychius cals it ciKavQoQ, because it lays hold on things in 

 its way with thorny horns. Cardanus calls it aKapafieXafog, a 

 word composed of Greek and Latin ; Gaza calls it /capa/3oe ; the 

 Italians call it Cereti, and vulgarly Polupeso; the French, Cerf 

 volant ; the English, Stag fly or Flying fly ; the Hollander, 

 Fliegende Hert ; the Illyrians, Gelui ; the Poles and Sclavonians, 

 Krowha Wielk. 



" Amongst all the horned beetles for the shape of its body, 

 length and magnitude, it may challenge the first place, and is the 

 most noted. It is blackish, of a dark red, especially about the 

 outward cover and the breast ; it hath two whole horns without 

 joynts, and with branches like a stag as long as ones little finger 

 in such as are grown up, but they are less and shorter in the 

 young ones, (or as Pliny saith) it has long and moveable horns 

 nicked with cloven pincers, and when it will, can bite or nip with 

 them, for it will close them wonderfully, and useth its horns for 

 that end for which crabs and lobsters do their claws ; the eyes are 

 hard putting forth and whitish, it hath foreyards on both sides of 

 them, one pair that are branched between the horns and eyes, the 

 joynt whereof makes almost a right angle, and two more breaking 

 forth in the midst of the forehead straight and plain, ending as it 

 were in a little smooth knot. 



*' It goes upon six feet ; the fore feet are longer and greater 

 than the rest. Lonicerus makes this to be the male; but I (if 

 there be any distinction between the male and the female) shall 

 no doubt to call it the female : both because the other kindes of 

 beetles are less (for, as Aristotle observes, the males in insects 

 are far less than the females), an also in copulation the females 

 receive from the lesser as experience confirms it. The male is 

 altogether like it, but is less both for body and in horns : which 



