COLEOPTERA. — CUIOCERID.E. 375 



miiuil segments are also furnished with larger fleshy, pale-coloured 

 tubercles, above which the spiracles are placed ; the antenna," are dis- 

 tinct, but very minute ; the larvjc are very slow in their movements, 

 and discharge a black fluid from the mouth when alarmed. During 

 the summer of 1836 they did much damage to the asparagus planta- 

 tions along the Western Road, particularly those of the Duke of 

 Northumberland. Bouche has given a description, accompanied by 

 a very bad figure, of this larva, in his Naturgeschichte, p. 2()1'. [)1. 10. 

 f. 38., in which he has entirely overlooked the legs. Rosel has de- 

 scribed and figured the different states of the same insect in his In- 

 sect. Bdustlg. vol. ii. Scar. terr. cl. 3. tab. 4., as has also Frisch, in 

 his first vol. t. 6. See also my memoir on this insect in the Garden- 

 ers Macjazine, No. 89. Another species, C. 12-punctata, also attacks 

 the asparagus : it is, however, exceedingly rare in this country. Friscli 

 has figured its various states in his second vol. pi. 5. tab. 28. 



Mr. Babington has published a short notice relative to the habits 

 of the rare British species Macroplea zosterge, of which he discovered 

 a great number of specimens in the centre of the dense mass of leaves 

 and branches of Potamogeton pectinatus, always beneath the sui face 

 of the water, many being found coupled. {^Ent. Mag. No. 22. p. 438.) 

 (^fig. 45. 6. represents the remarkable posterior tarsus of this genus). 



Many of these insects emit a noise like that made by the small Lep- 

 tura*, when alarmed; probably caused by the friction of the prothorax 

 against the base of the mesothorax, or of the abdomen against the 

 elytra. 



Amongst the exotic genera are especially to be noticed the Brazilian 

 genus Megalopus, the splendid Asiatic and African genus Sagra 

 {fig. 45. 7. hind leg of $ Sagra), and the New Holland genera C'arpo- 

 phagus and Megamerus MacL., in all of which, but more especially 

 in Sagra, the hind femora are incrassated and toothed, and the tibiae 

 curved ; the two last-named genera seem to form a connecting link 

 between the Crioceridai and the Bruchida?, in addition to those aheady 

 alluded to. 



The second division of tlie Phytophaga is named Cycmca by La- 

 treille, from the rounded form of the body of the majority of these 

 insects, in which the base of the elytra is not broader than the hind 

 part of the thorax. The antenna; are short and fiUform, or but 

 slightly thickened at the tips ; the tarsi are ibimed as in the Crio- 



u tt 4 



