228 Modern Entomology. |April, 
take the credit to himself instead of awarding it to the ants. 
It thus becomes very easy to deny that the lower animals 
are capable of progress. 
From the ant to the ant-lion is not an unnatural tran- 
sition. Of these insects, which have no representatives in 
England, Mr. Wood gives a very interesting account, taken 
from Mr. Gosse’s ‘‘ Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica.” The 
ant-lion larva, it is said, is capable of existing without food 
for a long time, one of Mr. Westwood’s specimens having 
lived for six months without any nourishment whatever. 
This, our author remarks, “‘ is to be expected, as the supply 
of nourishment is very precarious.” But if we turn to his 
account of the tiger-beetle, whose larva lives on the same 
kind of prey as the ant-lion, and captures it in a somewhat 
similar manner, we read :—‘‘ All carnivorous creatures re- 
quire a constant supply of nourishment. The internal fire 
fed by animal fuel burns fast and fiercely, so that a tiger- 
beetle larva would die of hunger through a temporary depri- 
vation of food, which would little affect the turnip grub or 
the cabbage caterpillar.”’ This ill records with the remarks 
made anent the ant-lion. We have always found that car- 
nivorous animals are better able to bear prolonged absti- 
nence from food than are herbivorous species, whose supply 
of nourishment is, as a rule, so much less precarious. 
The superior beauty of the insects in tropical countries 
has been frequently insisted upon by travellers, and it has 
been ascribed to the greater intensity of the solar rays in 
those latitudes. Against thistheory Mr. Crookes has argued 
with much force in his ‘‘ Handbook of Dyeing and Calico 
Printing.” But the alleged fact is itself open to question. 
Our author remarks that some English groups of insects 
are quite as numerous, as large, and as handsome as their 
foreign representatives. Mr. Bates asks, very acutely, why, 
if climate have any direct connection with splendid colour- 
ation, do we find the females of so many Brazilian butter- 
flies clad in such dull and sombre attire, whilst the males 
display an almost dazzling lustre? ‘This one faét must, we 
think, suffice to overthrow the common notion of beauty as 
a result of light or of temperature. 
There is some curious information concerning the habit 
of certain Carabidz, which, when alarmed, eject noisome 
liquids as a means of defence. Some of these liquids are 
dark coloured and of evil odour, but not corrosive. 
The Brachinides, familiarly called bombardier beetles, 
emit a fluid so highly volatile, that ‘‘when it comes in 
conta¢t with the air it explodes with a slight report, leaving 
