182 Prof. J. C. Schiddte on the Classification 
protuberance on the ventral surface of the ninth segment; this 
latter exhibits exactly the same serrated margin as in the larva 
of Elateridee—a circumstance which has hitherto been entirely 
overlooked, perhaps because it is very little chitinized in Melasis ; 
and, finally, the larva of Melasis has no buccal cavity at all, but 
only a very small opening ‘for the mouth, so small that it can 
only be observed with difficulty—a point hitherto overlooked, 
but of the greatest importance. 
As soon as these facts are fully appreciated and properly 
combined, every idea of an animal so constructed burrowing in 
timber and feeding on it must at once be relinquished ; and if 
we then examine the accounts before us, it will soon appear that 
the investigators have not really seen what they and others 
think they have seen. 
Guérin had the larva and the piece of wood he figures sent to 
him from the Vicomte de Lamotte-Baracé, and he therefore founds 
his statements entirely on the written account of an unscientific 
correspondent. 
Professor N6rdlinger found the beetle sitting on an alder 
branch 3 inches in diameter and perforated with galleries im all 
directions. He asserts that ‘ the deposition of the « eggs certainly 
takes place in the same way as in Buprestide, the mother beetle 
there making use of clefts in the bark or even in the timber ;’ 
but as he does not say that he really has observed the process, 
his assertion, in spite of its decided language, cannot be looked 
upon as anything more than a mere supposition. He states, on 
the other hand, that he did find a dead beetle with its head and 
body half hidden in a “ fly-hole ”—that is, one of the openings 
made by perfect imseects on making their escape, at the end of 
their transformation, from the timber on which they lived as 
larvee ; but he surmises that it only intended to hide itself there ; 
for he says, if the beetle had penetrated into the timber through 
old burrows and deposited its eggs in the galleries, he thinks that 
he must have met with beetles in such burrows, which he has 
not. He adds, however, one observation which admits of no 
other explanation than that the eggs had not been deposited 
from the outside on the bark, but, on the contrary, in a burrow 
imside the wood—namely, that he found quite young larve in 
the thick of the timber, several inches from the bark. From a 
log of wood taken in one year, in November, beetles made their 
appearance through several consecutive years, from which he 
considers that the larva takes at least three years to complete its 
development. The larva is found in the burrows in a bent-up 
position, compressing the wood-dust behind itself so as to form 
an arched cavity. The burrows are undulating, but only in a 
horizontal plane*. 
* Stettin. entomol. Zeit. (1848) p. 225-226. 
