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HALF-AN-HOUR WITH A FEW- COMMON BEETLES. 

 By WM. DUCKWORTH. 



(Read at Carlisle.) 



The subject we have chosen for our paper to-night, though 

 not a popular one, is one which, we trust, will prove of some 

 interest to you all. Perhaps the general idea of beetles is 

 confined to the cockroach or black-beetle of our cellars (which, by 

 the way is not a beetle, but belongs to the cricket family) or 

 perhaps to the pretty and useful lady-bird or the dor beetle, which 

 goes under rather a vulgar name locally ; and it is rather surprising 

 that, generally, so little interest is taken, even by entomologists, in 

 such a numerous and strange class of insects. The life history of 

 some of our beetles reads like a fairy tale ; and some years ago the 

 narrators of each would, we are afraid, have been credited with the 

 powers of Baron Manchausen. We could tell you of one beetle, 

 whose bundle of small yellow eggs is laid in a hole in the ground ; 

 the eggs are soon hatched into free creeping larvae, something like 

 miniature spiders, which climb the nearest flower stem to the 

 blossom, and there wait the arrival of some unfortunate bee, in 

 search of honey or pollen ; they now leave the flower and cling to 

 the bee, and so get carried to the nest, where their first duty is to 

 eat the bee's egg, and then change into the true larval form. 

 They find enough nourishment in the food which the bee had 

 provided for its young, to carry them through the various stages to 

 the perfect insect, knoun as tlie Oil Beetle, ( Melor Cicafricosus,) 

 which deserves its name from a curious habit it has of distilling a 

 yellowish oil from the joints of the legs on being handled. We 

 could also tell you of the Bombadier Beetle, armed with a stern 



