The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles 



We have our botany; the Crioceris has 

 hers, which is subtler in its appreciation of 

 affinities. Her domain comprises two very 

 natural groups, that of the lily and that of the 

 smilax, which, with the advance of science, 

 has become the family of the Smilaceae. In 

 these two groups she recognizes certain gen- 

 era — the more numerous — as her own ; she 

 refuses the others, which ought perhaps to be 

 revised before being finally classified. 



An exclusive taste for the asparagus, one 

 of the foremost representatives of the Smi- 

 laceae, characterizes the two other Crioceres, 

 those eager exploiters of the cultivated as- 

 paragus. I find them also pretty often on 

 the needle-leaved asparagus {A. acutifolius), 

 a forbidding-looking shrub with long, flexible 

 stems bearing many branches, which the 

 Provencal vine-grower uses, under the name 

 of roumieu, as a filter before the tap of the 

 wine-vat, to prevent the refuse of the grapes 

 from choking up the vent-hole. Apart from 

 these two plants, the two Crioceres refuse ab- 

 solutely everything, even when in July they 

 come up from the earth with the famishing 

 stomachs which the long fast of the meta- 

 morphosis has given them. On the same 

 wild asparagus, disdainful of the rest, lives a 

 fourth Crioceris (C. paracenthesia) , the 



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