372 



BEETLE BEGONIACE/E. 



which the following is a reprentation, has the head 

 and upper part of the neck rich brown ; the throat, 

 rump, and tail coverts, bright blue ; the breast and 

 wing coverts green ; and the quills, tail feathers, and 

 bill, black. It is a native of Sumatra. 



Merops Sumatranus. 



There are many other Asiatic species, but as 

 nothing is known of them beyond the museum 

 descriptions, a transcript of tnese could afford no 

 information, and consequently give no pleasure to the 

 general reader. 



BEETLE. The English name used to designate 

 insects belonging to the order coleoptera. In general 

 it has reference to those particular species which are 

 of obseure colours and found in dark or damp situa- 

 tions ; but the term is by no means exclusively 

 employed for coleopterous insects, since the black 

 beetle, or, as it is more specifically, but not more 

 elegantly, termed the cockroach, belongs to another 

 order, namely, the orthoptera, distinguished at once 

 from the coleoptera, by having the wing-cases of a 

 jess firm consistence, and not meeting along the back 

 in a straight line. If it be deemed advisable to employ 

 English names to designate the orders and genera of 

 insects, and indeed any other of the less known 

 groups of animals, it must be admitted that the Eng- 

 lish names ought to be as restricted ly employed as 

 the scientific ones in the stead of which they are 

 used ; hence, the term beetle ought to be confined 

 to coleopterous insects alone. 



These animals are exceedingly numerous ; and 

 though there is a sort of general character which 

 runs through the whole, in consequence of which 

 they cannot be mistaken for or confounded with any 

 other tribe, they vary very much in the details ; and 

 the forms of some of them are exceedingly curious. 

 The greater number of them are a very sturdy race 

 in proportion to their size ; and in the perfection 

 and strength of their horny covering, not only in the 

 cases of the wings but upon the body and limbs 

 generally, they are among the most perfect instances 

 of that peculiar kind of strength and action which cha- 

 racterises the articulated animals. See AUTICCLATA. 



Though the greater number of beetles, even of 

 those which inhabit the w aters, can fly, yet flight is 

 with most of them rather the means of change of 

 place than of the immediate search of thur food ; 

 and even the aquatic ones are chiefly breathers of 

 air rather than breathers of water ; but as insects do 

 not breathe by the mouth, but by stemmata, or 

 piracies, which are often on the abdomen, the water- 



beetles do not raise the head above the water in 

 breathing, as is the case with aquatic mammalia, they 

 elevate the opposite part of their bodies, as may be 

 seen in the case of the dytisci, or plunger beetles. 



Generally speaking, they are obseure animals, 

 living in the earth, or otherwise in concealment, for 

 the greater part of their lives. They are mostly very 

 voracious both in the larva and the perfect state ; 

 and, though there are exceptions, their general func- 

 tion in nature appears to be that of scavengers. 

 They consume indiscriminately in the different spe- 

 cies, all manner of substances, animal or vegetable, 

 which would otherwise be wasted ; though there are 

 several species which prey directly upon living 

 animals, and others upon living plants. 



The quantity of substances that thev consume, 

 which would otherwise beeorne offensive, might 

 appear almost incredible to those who do not con- 

 sider their numbers and their activity ; and, though 

 none of them are very large animals, perhaps there 

 is no raee more useful in the economy of nature 

 than the beetles, especially in warm climates, where 

 the action of life and also of putridity are peculiarly 

 strong. 



They are also great favourites with those who 

 form collections. Their forms are not, in general, 

 handsome, according to the commonly received 

 notions ; but their colours are, in many of the spe- 

 cies, the most splendid that are met with in nature, 

 on account of the richness of their tints, the brilliance 

 of their metallic lustre, and the iridescence of their 

 varying hues as the light falls differently upon them. 

 In consequence of the firmness of their covering they 

 also alter less in the dead state, either by shrivelling, 

 or by the fading off of their tints, than almost any 

 other animals ; so that a collection of the bodies of 

 dead beetles, comes nearer in appearance to a collec- 

 tion of living ones than is the case in almost any 

 other animals, the shells of the mollusca not excepted, 

 as the tints of these when living are often in the 

 epidermis. 



Of animals which are so numerous there are of 

 course many subdivisions, which cannot conveniently 

 be explained under the English name beetle. There- 

 fore it will be more convenient to refer them to the 

 general article COLEOPTERA, and the subordinate 

 ones which are referred to from that. 



BEGONIACE,. A natural order of dicotyle- 

 donous plants, allied to the Polygoneas, containing 

 one genus and about forty species. The characters 

 of the o^der are : flowers unisexual ; tube of the 

 coloured calyx adnate with the ovary, limb of the 

 calyx, in the sterile flowers, consisting of four species, 

 in the fertile of five ; stamens distinct or united into 

 a solid column ; anthers collected into a head, two- 

 celled ; ovary winged, three-celled ; stigmas three, 

 two-lobed, sessile, somewhat spiral ; fruit capsular, 

 winged, three-celled, with numerous minute seeds. 



The plants of this order are herbaceous or shrubby, 

 furnished, like the Polygonese, with an acid juice, and 

 having pink or white flowers growing in cymes. They 

 are common in the East and West Indies and in the 

 warmer parts of South America. No species are met 

 with on the African continent, although some exist in 

 Madagascar and the Isles of France and Bourbon. 



The Begoniaceae require considerable heat and 

 humidity, and are easily propagated by seeds or cut- 

 tings. Few of them are used either in an economi- 

 cal or medicinal point of view, being chiefly prized 



