236 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



tuous paths, at its first starting perhaps not bigger than a 

 pin's head, but gradually increasing in dimensions as the 

 animal increases in magnitude, till it attains in some in- 

 stances to a diameter of one or two inches. Only con- 

 ceive what havoc the grub of the vast Prionus giganteus 

 must make in a beam ! Percival is probably speaking 

 of this beetle, when, in his account of Ceylon, he tells 

 us, " There is an insect found here which resembles an 

 immense over-grown beetle. It is called by us a car- 

 penter, from its boring large holes in timber, of a re- 

 gular form, and to the depth of several feet, in which, 

 when finished, it takes up its habitation 3 ." Seeing the 

 perfect insect come out of these holes, an unentomolo- 

 gical observer would naturally conclude that the beetle 

 he saw had formed it, and lived in it; but, doubtless, 

 the whole was the work of the grub 5 . Of all the cole- 

 opterous genera there is none the species of which are 

 generally so rich, resplendent and beautiful as those of 

 Buprestis : these likewise, in their first state, there is 

 abundant reason to believe, derive their nutriment from 

 the produce of the forest, in which they sometimes re- 

 main for many years before they assume their perfect 

 state, and appear in their full splendour, as if nature 

 required more time than usual to decorate these lovely 

 insects. We learn from Mr. Marsham, that the grub of 

 13. splendida was ascertained to have existed in the wood 



long and four broad, is thus pierced with twelve oval holes, of some 

 of which the longest diameter is a quarter of an inch ! Mr. Charles 

 Miller first discovered lead in the stomach of the larva of this insect. 



a P. 310. 



b See Kirby, ubisupr. 2,53. More than a hundred species of the 

 Capricorn tribe, many of them nondescripts, were collected in the 

 neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro by Captain Hancock, of the Fou- 

 droyant 



