BEETLES 



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to 3 inches in length. The larva, considered by some to have been the cossus 

 delicacy so highly prized by the ancient Romans, is only found in wood, mostly 

 in decayed stems, and requires several years to develop into the beetle, which flies 

 by night in May and June, and during the day sucks the sap from injured oaks. 

 Rhinoceros- The Lamellicorn beetles include a considerable number of species 



Beetle. which are found in the forest, and many that live on trees and bushes 

 amid other surroundings. These beetles, the terminal joints of whose antennae, 

 numbering from three to seven, are laminate or leaf-shaped, and form a diagonally 

 placed club, which, in most of the species, can be spread out like a fan, live as 

 eyeless, long-legged grubs in manure, decaying wood, and other vegetable-matter, 

 and as adult beetles parti)' in similar places, and partly on plants, eating the leaves, 

 or sucking the sap. Like 

 the larva of the stag- 

 beetle, the adult insect 

 and larva of the rhino- 

 ceros - beetle (Oryctes 

 nasicorn is), which is not 

 now common on the Con- 

 tinent, live in decayed 

 oaks, and especially in 

 oak-bark. This beetle is 

 from 1 to 1\ inches long, 

 chestnut-brown in col- 

 our, with rows of five 

 spots on the elytra, while the head 

 carries a curved horn, long in the 

 males and short in the females. 



Unlike the rhino- 

 Cockchafer. 



ceros - beetle and stag- 

 beetle, the cockchafer (Melolontha 

 vulgaris) frequents many kinds of 

 foliage. This well-known species is 

 an inch or rather more in length, 

 long-haired on the thorax, elsewhere 



short-haired, with brown elytra shorter than the abdomen which are dotted with 

 whitish scales and ornamented with four or five smooth ridges. The antennae 

 are ten-jointed, the club in those of the male having seven joints, in those of the 

 female only six : they are rusty brown in colour, as are the legs, but the head, 

 thorax, and scutellum are generally black. The larva — familiar to country-people 

 as the cockchafer-grub, and often unearthed when potato-digging — is most injurious 

 to the roots of trees and field-plants. The mature insect is also mischievous, 

 stripping the foliage ofl' oaks, fruit-trees, and vines, sparing only the leaves of 

 the pear which are as tough as leather. The females of this beetle, which flies 

 from April or May for about a month or six weeks, deposit their eggs in the 

 ground, from which in some four to six weeks issue the larvae. These 

 latter do not, however, develop into pupae until the third or fourth summer, 



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COCKCHAFERS. 



