234 iilEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 



liberty, crying^ out and running away in the utmost alarm 

 she tl'.rew down her prize". — The golden- wasp tribe, 

 also, ( Chrj/sis and Parnopes^ F.) all of which 1 suspect to 

 he parasitic insects, roll themselves up, as I have often 

 observed, into a little ball when alarmed, and can thus 

 secure themselves — the upper surface of the body being 

 remarkably hard, andiir.penetrable to their weapons — 

 from the stings of those Ili/menoptera whose nests they 

 enter with the view of depositing their eggs in their 

 offspring. Latreille noticed this attitude in Parnopes 

 carnea^ which, he tells us, Bembex rostrata pursues, 

 though it attacks no otlier similar insect, with great 

 fury; and, seizing it with its feet, attempts to dispatch 

 it with its sting, from which it thus secures itself''. 



Other insects endeavour to protect themselves from 

 danger by simulating death. The common dung-chafer 

 (Scarabceus slercorarius, L.) when touched, or in fear, 

 sets out its legs as stiff as if they were made of iron- 

 wire — wiiich is their posture when dead — and remain- 

 ing perfectly motionless, thus deceives the rooks which 

 prey upon them, and like the ant-lion before cele- 

 brated*^ will eat them only when alive. A different 

 attitude is assumed by one of the tree-chafers {lloplia 

 puheridenta) probably with the same view. It some- 

 times elevates its posterior legs into the air, so as to 

 form a straight vertical line, at right angles with the 

 upper surface of its body. — Another genus of insects 

 of the same order, the piil-f)eetles (Bj/r)iii<s, F., Sj/m- 

 plocaria, Marsh.), have recourse to a iuethod the re- 

 verse of this. They pack their legs, which are short 



* Hill's Sivamiti. i. 174. " Jnn. clu 3Ins. 1810. 5. 



* Vol. I. 2d Ed. p. 4^8. 



