COLEOPTERA. — LAMPYRIDiE. 251 



comotion (as, indeed, De Geer liad long previously observed), but 

 also as an instrument to cleanse the head and fore parts of the body 

 from the slime left upon them by the snails, whilst engaged in their 

 repast.* The larva is stated by this author to attain its full size in 

 April, when it prepares to assume the pupa state ; from the com- 

 mencement of which period, until it assumes the perfect state, fif- 

 teen days only are consumed, eight of which are passed in the pupa 

 state. The shortness of the duration of this state may, perhaps, be 

 accounted for, from the great similarity existing between the larva and 

 female insect ; whence there is but little change required to be effected 

 in the constitution of the insect in these states. When the larva is 

 ready to assume the pupa state, instead of slitting the skin in a line 

 down the back, a slit on each side of the three thoracic segments is 

 made, separating the upper from the lower surfaces ; the insect then 

 draws its head from out of the skin which had covered it, and the 

 whole body is extricated through the aperture thus made ; the insect 

 immediately assumes a bent position, and becomes a pupa ; but it has 

 the power of moving its antenna;, legs, and head, as well as of twisting 

 its body about, and pushing itself along by the alternate extension and 

 contraction of the terminal segments of the body. The female pupa 

 (Jig-'2Q. 9.) is especially interesting ; being, in fact, a perfectly ap- 

 terous coleopterous pupa. In this state it has been figured by De 

 Geer. The pupa of the male exhibits the ordinary rudiments of the 

 elytra and wings. ,-- ' 



I have represented at fig. 26. 10. a large flattened larva of this 

 family, nearly allied to that of the glowworm, from the collection 

 of the Rev. F. W. Hope, having long and very acute curved mandibles 

 (Jig. 26. 11.; head partly immersed in the prothoracic cavity). 

 It is from Valparaiso, and is of a black colour, with two yellow spots in 

 the front of the pronotum. ^~ — ■ ■ 



In addition to the various memoirs above referred to, De Geer's 

 Memoire sur le Ver Lnisant, in the 3Iimoires de V Academie des 

 Sciences de Paris, vol. 2. ; Mr. Wilson's Entomologia Edinensis, and 

 the Magazine of Natural History for November, 1 835, may be re- 



* (See also Bulletin des Sciences Nuturelles, June 1826, vol. viii. p. 296.) In the 

 first number of Brande's Journal of Science is contained a paper by jMr. Rcnnie upon 

 the cleanliness of animals, in which this anal apparatus (without acknowledgment) 

 is magnified into a thick pencil of hairs, not unlike a shaving brush, emiiloyed by the 

 insect in the manner above mentioned. 



