ON ENTOMOLOGY. 7 



species, known in this country as the Ruse Chafer, alive for upwards of 

 three years, by feeding it with fruit and moistened white bread. It is 

 about the size of the common black garden Beetle, the colour is most bril- 

 liantly varnished and of a golden green. It is not very uncommon du- 

 ring the hottest parts of summer, frequenting various plants and flowers, 

 its larva is commonly found in the hollows of old trees, or among the 

 loose dry soil at their roots, and sometimes in the earth of ant hills. 



LAMPYRIS NOCTILUCA, or Glow-worm, is seen during the summer 

 months on dry banks about woods and pastures, exhibiting as soon as it 

 is dusk vivid and phosphoric splendor, in the form of a round spot of con- 

 siderable size. The animal itself, which is the female insect, measures 

 about three quarters of an inch in length, and is of a dull earthy brown 

 on the upper parts, and beneath more or less tinged with rose colour, 

 with the two or three last joints on the body of a pale or whitish sulphur 

 colour ; it is from these parts that the phosphoric light proceeds. The 

 male is smaller than the female, and is provided with wings and wing- 

 sheaths ; but it is not determined whether it is luminous or not. 



CICENDELA CAMPESTRIS or Tiger Beetle, is one of the most beautiful 

 of out indigenous insects. It is of a fine green colour, glossed witli 

 coppery red, and having five yellowish spots on the margin of each 

 elytron, and another towards the middle. The Cicindeltf, by their ra- 

 pacity, have procured them the name of Tiger Beetles. They prey in- 

 discriminately on other insects, arid few of the smaller kinds are capable 

 of eluding or resisting their attack. 



THE COMMON COCKCHAFER (Melolontha Vulgaris) ; the larva of this 

 insect, called by the farmers the Grub, which does so much injury to 

 the crops, are three years coming to perfection ; during this time they 

 do immense injury, burrowing between the turf and the soil, and devour- 

 ing the roots of grass and other plants. The mother Cockchafer, when 

 about to lay her eggs, digs into the earth of a meadow or corn field to 

 the depth of a span, and deposits them in a cluster at the bottom of the 

 excavation. Rosel, in order to watch their proceedings, put some females 

 into glasses half-filled with earth, covered with a tuft of grass, and a 

 piece of thin muslin ; in a fortnight he found some hundreds of eggs 

 deposited, of an oval shape and a pale yellow colour. Placing the glass 

 in a cellar, the eggs were hatched towards autumn, and the Grubs in- 

 creased remarkably in size. In the following May they fed so voraciously, 

 that they required a fresh turf every second day, and even this proving 

 too scanty provender, he sowed in several garden pots a crop of peas, 

 lentils and salad ; and when the plants came up he put a pair of Grubs 

 in each pot, and in this manner fed them through the second and third 

 years. During this period, they cast their skins three or four times, 

 going for this purpose deeper into the earth, and burrowing out a hole, 

 where they might effect their change undisturbed, and they do the same 

 in the winter, during which they become torpid and do not eat. When 

 the Grub changes into a pupa, in the third autumn after it is hatched, 



