COLEOPTEROUS INSECTS. 89 



mery," which people the gay parterres of a tropical 

 landscape, and embellish them 



With their rich restless wings, that gleam 



Variously in the crimson beam 



Of the warm west — as if inlaid 



With brilliants from the mine, or made 



Of rainbows. 



These insects occur in almost every country 

 capable of supporting animal life. Even the un- 

 genial sun of Greenland and Iceland awakes to a 

 short and precarious existence a few small species, 

 which endure, or rather escape from, the rigours of 

 an arctic winter, by a kind of hybernation partly 

 analogous to that of some vertebral animals. In the 

 higher latitudes, however, of Melville Island and 

 Winter Harbour, no coleopterous insect has been 

 observed ; and even the pestilent mosquito, which 

 spreads over almost the entire surface of the habita- 

 ble globe, extracting its nutriment equally from the 

 tropical Indian and the greasy hide of the Lapland- 

 er, appears unable to encounter the icy atmosphere 

 of these hyperborean lands. It may indeed excite 

 surprise that creatures of so fragile a nature should 

 be found at all in such countries as those just 

 mentioned ; but it must be borne in mind, that they 

 not only pass certain periods in the pupa or torpid 

 state, but are usually, while in that condition, deeply 

 buried in the earth. " What they chiefly require," 

 Mr Macleay observes, " is the presence of heat 

 during some period of their existence ; and the 



