THE CERAMBYCID. 325 
and the diversity in the structure of their mouths depends upon 
the nature of the vegetable matters upon which they feed. The 
species are world-wide, but their abundance is in distinct relation 
with the richness of the vegetation of different countries, so that 
South America, India, Ceylon, and the Islands of Sunda, and 
the Moluccas contain a great number of the most beautiful and 
largest Capricorns. It is impossible to confound a beetle be- 
longing to this family with that of any other. There is the 
greatest resemblance amongst the larvae of the whole family, 
and they look like stout elongated white worms, and the segments 
of their bodies are very much alike in all. All the segments are 
a little swollen, the first, however, being the largest, and being 
covered above and below with a leathery plate. They have rudi- 
mentary antenne. These larve live in the trunks and branches 
of trees, and in the cellular structures of some herbaceous plants. 
As they never come to the light they are colourless, and have 
soft integuments, but as they feed upon the wood out of which 
they form galleries, they have very strong jaws and a very stout 
head. As they do not want to walk much in a narrow gallery, 
they have no legs, or else they are in a most rudimentary con- 
dition, but their swollen segments enable them to climb. This 
history of the peculiar structures of the larva presents striking 
analogies with that of the wood-eating larve of the Lepidoptera 
and Hymenoptera; and the existence of similar adaptations in 
very different insects in order to enable them to live under the 
same conditions of existence is very remarkable. But the weak 
jaws of Chalcophora Mariana, which are presumed to do the same 
kind of work as those of the Cerambycide, must be remembered 
in considering such generalisations. The strength of the jaws of 
the larvae of the Cerambycide differs according to the density 
of the tissue of the plant in which the particular species live. 
The abdomen of the female beetles of some genera is provided 
with an ovipositor of considerable length, by means of which 
they can insert their eggs into the crevices of trees or plants, in 
the interior of which their larve live and are hatched. The 
larve make a cocoon by joining together fragments of wood and 
little bits of vegetable tissue with their saliva, and are trans- 
formed into nymphs. Some of the beetles are remarkable for 
