CHAPTER It 



TIGER BEETLES, OR CICINDELIDJB. 



At the head of the insect race are by common consent 

 placed the .multitudinous species which are collected under 

 the common title of Geodephaga. This very appropriate 

 title is formed from two Greek words, signifying devourers of 

 the earth, and is given to the large group of carnivorous Beetles 

 which live on the ground, in contradistinction to another great 

 group of carnivorous Beetles which live in the water, and are 

 called Hydradephaga, or devourers of the water. In both these 

 groups, the larva or grub, and the perfect insect, agree in their 

 general habits, so that the larva?, of the first group are always 

 found on land, and those of the second group as invariably in 

 the water. 



Equally by common consent of entomologists, the Tiger 

 Beetles have been placed at the head of the Geodephaga. For- 

 merly they were all classed under one family, the Cicindelid;e, 

 but of late years, in accordance with the ever-growing mania for 

 subdivision and over-refining, they have been split up into a 

 number of families, the first of which are the Mantichoridse, a 

 group of which we have no British representative. The name 

 is a very curious one, and I will explain it before describing 

 the insect which is our representative of the tribe to which it 

 belongs. 



Some 2,300 years ago, there lived a certnin Greek historian 

 named Ctesias, who was taken prisoner by Artaxerxes Mnemon 

 at the battle of Cunaxa, so celebrated for the retreat of Xeno- 

 phon's famous "Ten Thousand." Profiting by his honoured cap- 

 tivity of seventeen years, during which time he was the physician 

 of Artaxerxes, he wrote a history of Assyria and Persia, in which 

 he introduced accounts of sundry remarkable animals. There 



