THE FLOEAL WOELD AND GAEDEN GUIDE. 311 



close together over the body like valves, fitting so exactly that 

 they often seein like one piece, and we are apt to forget the very 

 beautiful and delicate transparent wings which are folded up under 

 their hard shiny coats, read}- to be expanded and bear them up into 

 the air. 



As we look at a beetle at rest, we can easily perceive that there 

 is not the narrow part between the chest and the stomach which we 

 see in many insects, but that the head and chest are joined imme- 

 diately on to the rest of the body. 



All beetles have but two eyes, but these are what are called 

 compound eyes, and are made up of many small eye-lets, which no 

 doubt supply them with very acute sight. As their food is very 

 varied, their mouths are fitted for several ways of getting at it, and 

 in different kinds of beetles are suited for cutting gnawing, tearing, 

 or chewing ; but never for suckiug or for lapping, like those of the 

 fly and bee. And they need all these different little instruments for 

 feeding themselves, since some prey on the flesh of dead animals, 

 some on rotten wood, some on wood that is fresh and growing, some 

 on the roots of grasses and plants, some on grain, and some on 

 leaves ; while the most dainty of all would seem to be those who 

 feed on the petals of flowers. Beetles pass through the same changes 

 and transformations as other insects. At first the form is like that 

 of a grub or larva, like a short thick worm, its body very soft, but 

 with a horny head, something like what it afterwards has as a per- 

 fect beetle. In* this state it prepares for the change into a pupa or 

 chrysalis, by contriving some kind of defence around it. Some have 

 been hatched from eggs previously laid in the earth, and when about 

 to undergo the change, they hollow out the earth around them so as 

 to form a little cave. Others make a sort of cocoon, by joining 

 together particles of earth with web or sticky matter. Those which 

 live in wood have no need of cocoon, but change into pupae in the 

 hollow they have made while feeding on the fibre of the wood ; 

 while some, which feed on plants, hang themselves in round silken 

 cocoons from the leaves or stalks of it. 



We have no English beetles which are to be compared in splen- 

 dour with the Diamond beetle, which is found in tropical couutrie.% 

 whose wing-cases, when seen in the microscope, seem studded with 

 brilliant gems; yet many of our ga-d a beetles are very beautiful in 

 form and colour in their delicate antenna? and legs, and in the hues of 

 their wing-cases. We find in the centre of our roses the beautiful 

 rose-beetle, with its body of a bright emerald green burnished with 

 gold, and who seems as if conscious of the becoming contrast of 

 the glowing pink or crimson of its cradle to the hue of its own body. 

 The first state of life of the insect is very different to the nature of 

 its favourite food, since the grub is found in decayed wood and ant- 

 hills. Perhaps no beetle is more unlike the rose-beetle than the 

 great brown cockchafer, which we sometimes encounter in our 

 gardens in the evening, when it will strike against us as it flies, as 

 if its sight were imperfect ; from which circumstance is supposed 

 to come the saying, " As blind as a beetle." When the female 

 cockchafer wants to lay her eggs, she digs a bole in the ground 



October. 



