COLEOPTERA. 439 



and kept in pots hermetically sealed, so that it may preserve the 

 strong odour which it exhales in spring, which seems to be a 

 necessary condition of the remedy proving efficient. When a case 

 of hydrophobia presents itself, they reduce to powder some of these, 

 and spread this powder on a piece of bread-and-butter, and make 

 the patient eat it. Every part of the insect must enter into the 

 composition of this powder, which, for this reason, cannot be very 

 fine. During the whole time a patient is under treatment he must 

 avoid drinking as much as possible, or, if his thirst is very great, he 

 must only drink a little pure water ; but he may eat. Generally, this 

 remedy produces sleep, which may last for thirty-six hours, and which 

 must not be disturbed. When the patient wakes, he is, they say, 

 cured. The bite must be treated locally with the usual surgical 

 appliances. 



As to the dose of the remedy, that depends on the age of the 

 patient and the development of the disease. They give, to an adult, 

 immediately after the bite, from two to three beetles ; to a child, from 

 one to two; to a person in whom the disease has already declared 

 itself, from four to five. Given to a person in good health, the remedy, 

 however, would not be the least dangerous. In cases in which the 

 symptoms of hydrophobia show themselves some days after the 

 employment of the remedy, they recommence the treatment. They 

 have also tried to prepare this remedy with insects collected not in 

 their larvae but in the imago state, by catching them on flowers, and 

 it seems that these attempts have succeeded. According to M. Bog- 

 danoff, in many governorships of the south of Russia the lovers of 

 sporting are in the habit of making their dogs from time to time 

 swallow (as a preservative) half of a Cetonia with bread or a little wine. 

 Every one in those countries is persuaded of the efficacy of this means 

 for stopping the development of the disease. One ought not, perhaps, 

 to reject a belief so widespread and deeply rooted without some 

 experiments to guarantee us in doing so, for medicine does not 

 yet possess any remedy against hydrophobia: it might not then be 

 useless to try this. 



Two smaller species than the rose beetle, the Cetonia stictica and 

 the Cetonia hirtella, which has yellowish hairs, live on the flowers of 

 thistles. Western Africa, the Cape, Madagascar, &c., are very rich 

 in species of Cetonice. Among the Cetoniadcs is the genus Goliathus, 

 gigantic insects which inhabit Africa. Their total length sometimes 

 attains from three to five inches. Their colours are generally a dull 

 white or yellow, which has nothing metallic about it, with spots of a 

 velvety black these are due to a sort of down of an extreme thin- 



