THE BEETLE AND ITS ALLIES 



49 



to consider a family, that of the Dermestidae, 1 which is 

 economically directly injurious in a variety of ways. The 

 species of this family include small, oval, or elongated 

 beetles with gray or brown markings, which are due to 

 scales and can be rubbed off. The larvae are fuzzy, and 

 are more injurious than the imagos. They feed on wool, 

 leather, fur of all sorts, as well as on dried and salted 

 meats. Our most destructive species have been imported 

 from Europe. One of them is the carpet-beetle or "buf- 

 falo-bug," which lives upon carpets and clothing. The 

 museum pest is a closely related species which works sad 

 havoc with insect collections, unless these are subjected 

 several times a year to the poisonous fumes of carbon 

 disulphide (Fig. 47). 



The stag beetles (Lucanidae 2 ) have received their com- 

 mon name from the resemblance of their long, often 

 branched mandibles to the antlers of a 

 stag. The plates of the club-shaped 

 antenna cannot be brought compactly 

 together, as in the next family. The adult 

 beetles live on the sap of trees, and the 

 larvae bore into the wood of the roots and 

 trunk. The common large stag-beetle, 

 which is often attracted into our houses by 

 lamplight, is Lucanus dama. In the South 

 the giant stag-beetle (Lucanus elephans) is 

 found, with mandibles which, in the case of 

 the male, are more than three-fourths the length of the body. 



Closely allied to the last is the great family of lamelli- 

 corn 3 beetles, in which the ends of the antennae bear flat, 



1 Sepfj.rjvT'/is (5^/tyia, skin; &r0iw, to gnaw), a worm which destroys pelts. 



2 From lucus, grove. 3 lamella, a small plate or leaf ; cornw, horn. 



B 



FIG. 48. Dorcus, 

 a stag - beetle. 

 Nat. size. Photo, 

 by W. H. C. P. 



