206 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 



their habits to the European species ; some, however, frequent the 

 flowing wounds of trees, as, indeed, is occasionally the case with the 

 European Onthophagus ovatus (Perty, Delect. Animal, art. Braz. 

 p. 9, 10., and Lacordaire). 



The type of this family is the renowned " Sacred beetle " of the 

 Egyptians, of which so many models, carvings, amulets, &c., are dis- 

 covered, occasionally of a gigantic size, in sarcophagi, and rolled up in 

 the mummies and other ancient relics of that remarkable people, by 

 whom its appearance in great numbers on the sandy margins of the 

 Nile, after the annual rising and falling of the river, together with 

 its extraordinary motions whilst rolling along its little globular balls 

 of dung, were regarded as mystically representing the resurrection of 

 the soul, the motions of the earth and sun, <S:c. Latreille, who has 

 published a memoir upon these Sacred beetles in the fifth volume of 

 the Mem. clu Museum, translated by Bennett, in the first volume of the 

 Zoological Journal, and in the Appendix to the Voyage to Meroe of 

 M. Caillaud, considers the species which he has named Ateuchus 

 iEgyptiorum, and which is of a fine greenish colour, as that which 

 especially engaged the attention of the early Egyptians, being found by 

 M. Caillaud in Sennari, where their first settlements were established.* 

 MouflPet, with his usual cumbrous loquacity, has given a long account 

 of these insects and their supposed virtues. It was also regarded as 

 the emblem of fertility ; and, even at the present day, we are informed 

 by Dr. Clarke that it is eaten by the women of Egypt. The various 

 species of Sacred beetles, whereof Dejean enumerates twenty-six, 

 are distinguished by their flattened form, radiated clypeus, long 

 hind legs, clothed with hairs, with the posterior tarsi obliquely in- 

 serted ; head and thorax unarmed^ and elytra, with the margins not 

 sinuated, constituting the genus Ateuchus Weber, or the subgenus 

 Heliocantharus MacLeay ; the latter name being adopted from the 

 Greek 'HXtoKco'flapoc, being the term given to these celebrated insects 

 by the early naturalists. This family is nearly allied, on the one hand, 

 to the Aphodiidse (with which, indeed, Latreille united it, under the 

 name Coprophagi), from which, however, it is distinguished by the 

 broad, orbiculate form of the body, the elongated mandibles, and the 

 large metasternum. From the Geotrupidte they are easily distin- 

 guished by the large size of the head, the clypeus entirely covering 



* See also the 'Naturalist s Library, art, EntomoL, vol. ii. p. 188. 



