part it.} THE INSECTS WHICH VISIT FLOWERS. 33 
became correspondingly modified in structure when they had 
learned to depend upon such a diet exclusively: so that the view 
(defended by Delpino), according to which certain flowers have 
been predestined for certain insects, and vice versd, is untenable.} 
In the larval state I have observed only one anthophilous 
_ beetle (Helodes arcta) to affect a floral diet ; other beetles, which 
as larve feed on the parts of flowers, e.g. the Apple Gouger 
(Anthonomus pomorum), abandon flowers on attaining to the 
perfect state. The larve of beetles which are anthophilous 
when mature, are partly carnivorous (TZelephorus, Trichodes, 
Coccinella), partly feeders on putrid animal matter (Dermestide), 
partly feeders on living or decaying vegetable matter (Buprestida, 
Cerambycide, Llateride, Chrysomelide, Curculionide, Cistela, 
_ Lagria, Mordellide, Lamellicornia). 
Of the carnivorous larve, most species of Coccinella and 
 Telephorus yemain carnivorous in the perfect state, but some 
(Coccinella septempunctata, C. L4punctata, C. mutabilis, Telephorus 
 fuscus, T. melanurus, etc.) though they do not disdain flesh 
altogether resort more or less to flowers, and TZ vichod:s in the 
perfect state restricts itself absolutely to a floral diet. 
| In the next group, larve which feed upon putrefying animal 
matter, Dermestes retains the same habit in its perfect state, 
Snover visiting flowers, and Anthrenus and Attagenus sometimes 
do the same; but of these latter genera, the same species which 
under favourable circumstances, ¢.g. in neglected zoological collec- 
_ tions, feed for many generations on animal matter, without ever 
leaving the cases whose contents they are destroying, in other 
circumstances may be found by hundreds upon flowers, busily 
feeding upon pollen and honey. 
The most perfect gradations are exhibited, however, by those 
families whose larve feed upon vegetable matter, as the following 
selection shows: I have taken no species of Bostrichide on 
flowers ; of the Curculionide, only a tiny part of the family resort 
(and then exceptionally) to flowers, whether of the same plants 
. in which they pass their earlier stages (Gymnetron campanule, 
_Larinus Jacee and senilis), or of other plants on which they 
find freely accessible honey (e.g. Otiorhynchus picipes on Cornus, 
species of Apion on Adoxa and Chrysosplenium) ; the Chrysomelide, 
a 
PRO er eae «7 
1 Cf. the discussion of Delpino’s teleological conceptions in the fourth section. 
_ * J have found larve and pupe of Larinus senilis, F., at Miihlberg in Thuringia, 
at the base of the capitula of Carlina acaulis, and the perfect insect on the leaves 
_ and now and then on the flowers of the same plant. 
D 
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