INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 235 



feet, in which, when finished, it takes up its habitation*/' 

 Seeing- the perfect insect come out of these holes, an un- 

 entomological observer would naturally conclude that 

 the beetle he saw had formed it, and lived in it ; but, 

 doubtless, the whole was the work of the grub''. — Of 

 all the coleopterous genera there is none the species of 

 which are generally so rich, resplendent and beautiful 

 as those of Buprestis : these likewise, in their first state, 

 there is abundant reason to believe, derive their nutri- 

 ment from the produce of the forest, in which they some- 

 times remain for many years before they assume their 

 perfect state, and appear in their full splendour, as if 

 nature required more time than usual to decorate these 

 lovely insects. We learn from Mr. Marsham, that the 

 grub of B. splendida was ascertained to have existed in 

 the wood of a deal table more than twenty years'^. — In 

 this enumeration of timber-eating- beetles, I must not 

 fijrget the Fabrician genera, Anobium and Ptilinus, 

 because of one of them {Anohium pcrthiaa:) Linne com- 

 plains " terebravit et desiruxit sedilia mea^;'''' and I can 

 renew the same complaint against A. striatum, which 

 not only has destroyed my chairs, but also picture- 

 frames, and has perforated in every direction the deal 

 floor of my chamber, from which it annually emerges 

 through little round apertures in great numbers. — The 

 utility of entomological knowledge in economics was 

 strikingly exemplified, when the great naturalist just 

 mentioned, at the desire of the king of Sv/eden, traced 



= p. 310. 



"* See Kirby, ubi supr. 253. — More than a hundred species of the Ca- 

 pricorn tribe, many of them nondescripts, were collected in the neigh? 

 boiirhood of Rio de Janeiro by Captain Hancock, of the Foudroyant. 



" In Linn. Trans, x. S99. " %sL Nat. 365. 2, 



