118 INSECTS COLEOPTERA DIAGRAM I) 



medical purposes. They are largely collected on the Continent, 

 where the persons employed cover the face and hands, and go in 

 the morning and shake the trees which the insects frequent, 

 over cloths. They are then killed by dipping them in vinegar, 

 or by putting them in a sieve under which vinegar is boiled. 

 Then they are put into tight fitting cases, that the mites may 

 not get at them. But if mites can eat the cantharides with 

 impunity, men cannot, for they are a terrible poison. They are 

 used to make blister paste ; and if we look closely at this 

 preparation, it is easy to discover small brilliant green atoms in 

 it, which are fragments of the elytra of the insects. These are 

 the cantharides, which make blister paste act like a hot iron, or 

 like boiling water, in raising tho epidermis and forming a 

 blister full of water. 



The corn-weevil, which is also called simply the tveevil, lives in 

 heaps of corn, keeping itself hidden near 

 the surface without burying itself deeper 

 than a few- inches, and without ever 

 appearing outside. Its colour is a 

 maroon brown ; its corslet is covered 

 with small points, and its elytra with 

 very fine furrows. The mischief which 

 the weevil may cause may be imagined 

 when it is remembered that it lays each 

 Weevil. o f its eggs in a separate grain of corn. 



For this purpose it drills an almost imperceptible hole. The 

 larva which is thus born in the very middle of its food, 

 devours the grain without coming out of it ; then undergoes 

 its metamorphosis ; and it is only then that the weevil pierces 

 the outer shell of the corn to go and lay its eggs in its 

 turn. 



It was absolutely necessary that every means of protection 

 against such an enemy should be sought for, and it was 

 soon observed that the weevil could only live in the middle 

 of grains of corn which were not agitated. Quiet is abso- 



