452 



COLEOPTERA. 



fourths as many Coleoptera as are known to live in this 

 country. They comprise the mammoths among insects, and it 

 is in the tropics that we meet with the most numerous and 

 bizarre, as well as gigantic forms. Always 

 readily recognized by their clubbed lamel- 

 late antennae, the terminal joints being 

 expanded into broad flat leaves, which, at 

 the will of the insect, can be closely shut 

 into a compact club, or loosely expanded 

 faivlike, and laid under the projecting cly- 

 peus, so overhanging the mouth-parts as 

 to give rise to the terms beetle-horned, 

 and "beetling;" these insects, by their 

 Fig. 404. robust, thick, often square body, short fos- 



sorial legs, with large hooked claws for seizing leaves and 

 stems, have been well known to all observing persons, however 

 slight their entomological knowledge. The larvae are thick 

 and fleshy cylindrical grubs, with a corneous head, and rather 

 long four-jointed antennae ; the ocelli are generally wanting ; 

 the legs are stout and long, without claws, and the last ab- 

 dominal segment is soft and baggy. The body 

 is often very transparent, the tracheae appear- 

 ing through. Fig. 405 represents a singular 

 larva (magnified twice) of this family from 

 Mr. Sanborn's collection. 



The genus Copris and allies are known by 

 their rounded form, and the broadly expanded 

 clypeus, which covers in the mouth-parts. In 

 some species (those of Deltochilum) the anterior 

 tarsi arc wanting either in the females or both 

 sexes ; and in some species a stridulating ap- 

 paratus is found on the upper surface of the 

 abdomen. In Copris the labial palpi are dilated, 

 the first joint of the autennal club does not receive the others, 

 and the claws are distinct. The larva of C. Carolina Fabr., 

 while, according to Osten Sacken, having the general appear- 

 ance of the larvae of the Lamellicorns, is much thicker and 

 curved up, the back being much swollen and " distended into 

 a hump-like expansion. It is about two inches long and of a 



Fig. 405. 



