8 Major Parry’s Catulogue 
Lucanus cervus, Linneeus. 
The earliest figure representing this species with which I am 
acquainted is to be met with in Gesner’s History of Foor-footed 
Beasts, Serpents and Insects, published by Edward Topsel, in 
London, 1658. The description is so quaint that I have deemed 
it not uninteresting to republish it im extenso. 
“ Beetles are some greater, some less, the great ones some 
have horns, others without horns. Those that have horns some 
are like Hartshorns, other have Buls horns, some have horns 
in their noses: we shall speak of them all in order. The 
IlAaruxepwc, or Hartshorn beetle, is called Lucanus by Nigidius ; 
as Pliny witnesseth. Some call it the Bull, others the Flying 
Stag: Hesychius cals it axayoc, because it lays hold on things in 
its way with thorny horns. Cardanus calls it cxcapafedagoc, a 
word composed of Greek and Latin; Gaza calls it kapafoc; the 
Italians call it Cereti, and vulgarly Polupeso; the French, Cerf 
volant; the English, Stag fly or Flying fly; the Hollander, 
Fliegende Hert; the Ilyrians, Gelui; the Poles and Sclavonians, 
Krowha Wielk. 
“ Amongst all the horned beetles for the shape of its body, 
length and magnitude, it may challenge the first place, and is the 
most noted. It is blackish, of a dark red, especially about the 
outward cover and the breast; it hath two whole horns without 
joynts, and with branches like a stag as long as ones little finger 
in such as are grown up, but they are less and shorter in the 
young ones, (or as Pliny saith) it has long and moveable horns 
nicked with cloven pincers, and when it will, can bite or nip with 
them, for it will close them wonderfully, and useth its horns for 
that end for which crabs and lobsters do their claws; the eyes are 
hard putting forth and whitish, it hath foreyards on both sides of 
them, one pair that are branched between the horns and eyes, the 
joynt whereof makes almost a right angle, and two more breaking 
forth in the midst of the forehead straight and plain, ending as it 
were in a little smooth knot. 
“It goes upon six feet; the fore feet are longer and greater 
than the rest. Lonicerus makes this to be the male; but I (if 
there be any distinction between the male and the female) shall 
no doubt to call it the female: both because the other kindes of 
beetles are less (for, as Aristotle observes, the males in insects 
are far less than the females), an also in copulation the females 
receive from the lesser as experience confirms it. The male is 
altogether like it, but is less both for body and in horns: which 
