CHAPTER X. 



LAMEILICORNS {continued) . 



We now come to the family of the Dynastidae, a family which, 

 taken as a whole, comprises some of the largest and handsomest 

 of all the Beetle race. The name Dynastes is taken from the 

 Greek, and signifies " powerful," and is very appropriate to these 

 large-bodied and stout-limbed insects. Most of them inhabit 

 tropical regions, and we have none of them in England, though 

 one species, Oryctes nasicomis, which is tolerably common on the 

 Continent, was at one time reckoned among British Beetles. 



The larva? of the Dynastidae reside in decaying vegetable 

 matter, especially within rotten tree-trunks or branches, just as 

 is the case with the common Eose Beetles of England. As the 

 Beetles are exceedingly large, the larvae are necessarily of 

 gigantic proportions, and I fancy that the sight of a full-grown 

 Dynastes larva would frighten almost anyone but practical 

 entomologists. Even the larva of the common Stag Beetle is a 

 terror to most persons unaccustomed to insects, and the larva ot 

 the Dynastes is to that of the Stag Beetle what a lobster is to 

 a prawn. 



I have already mentioned (on page 4) the incalculable service 

 which the wood-eating insects render to the forest lands. Some 

 strong-jawed insects are able to attack the tree as soon as it is 

 fallen or has died, and, having riddled the timber with their 

 galleries, their task is over. In the wet seasons the rain pene- 

 trates into these tunnels, lodges there, and decay sets in. In 

 course of time the tree would gradually be formed into a vege- 

 table mould, but so much time M'ould be occupied by the process 

 that the spot on which it lay would be absolutely barren, and so 

 the forest would by slow degrees vanish from the face of the 

 earth, did not these large Beetles accelerate the process of 

 decay. 



K 



