218 SUMMER 



of the leather-jacket, though this becomes no beetle, but 

 the daddy-longlegs or crane-fly. Both grubs are rapacious 

 enemies of field and garden cropSt and have secured a 

 common ill-fame, only excelled in their own line of life by 

 the wire- worm. If the wire- worm turned later into the stag- 

 beetle, or even the misnamed black beetle, it might fairly 

 make a bid for the pinnacle of celebrity ; but the click- 

 beetles, into which it turns, are undeservedly obscure for 

 insects with such a curious trick of motion. The claim of 

 the cockchafer to represent beetles, as the linnet or the 

 robin might represent birds, is also based on satisfying 

 qualities of shape and colour. He is neither dingy, like the 

 devil's coach-horse or the dor-beetle, nor ostentatiously 

 brilliant, like the soldier or sailor beetles, or the yellow- 

 banded grave-digger. His clear brown wing-cases and 

 shepherd's plaid markings on the abdomen make a design 

 which is modestly effective. His form has the proper 

 rotundity of a beetle, typified in the Egyptian scarabaeus, 

 and yet there is a touch of individuality in its lines. It has 

 no extravagant growth of horns, like the stag-beetle, nor 

 the sprawling misshapenness of the devil's coach-horse ; but 

 its antennae are finished in neat filigree, and its legs are 

 effectively hooked. 



The tribe of cockchafers are vegetable feeders in 

 the perfect as well as in the larval stage ; but many beetles 

 are carnivorous, and these perform a great service to man. 

 Some kinds, like the devil's coach-horse, hunt actively for 

 other insects, or slugs and snails ; the ladybirds rid us of 

 greenfly ; and other species, such as the burying-beetles and 

 the dor-beetle, dispose of carrion and other decaying filth. 

 Beetles play a large part in the destruction of old dead trees, 

 through which the larvae of many species eat their way; 

 and in primitive forests it is important for the dead trees 



