BEETLES 



241 



their bodies its eggs, which later on serve as food for the larva?. The common 

 burying-beetle (N. vespiUo), which is the best known of this family, is generally 

 entirely covered with red mites, and emits, if touched, a brown juice with a most 

 objectionable odour. The wing-covers are ornamented with two yellowish red cross- 

 bands, while the clubs of the antennas are yellowish red, and the thorax is clothed 

 in front with yellow down. The larva of another burying-beetle (SUpha obscwra), 

 which is injurious to fields of sugar-beet by eating the blossoms, is brilliant black 

 in colour, with the upper rings of the body marked with yellow. The adult beetle 

 is uniform black, nearly three-quarters of an inch long, with small dots between the 





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BURYINi. -BEETLES. 



three slightly raised lines of each wing-cover. The dusky burying-beetle (S. opaea) 

 is a rather flat insect under half an inch in length, with the upper part of the body 

 grey, in consequence of being covered with down. The larva of this species likewise 

 destroys sugar-beet, as does that of the black burying-beetle (S. atrata). The latter 

 species is oval in shape, and has uniformly black wing-covers, with three slightly 

 raised lines, and is about half an inch long. 



In the family Nitidvlidce we have the rape-seed beetle (Meligethes arneus), 

 a species found on blossoms of all kinds, but especially on rape, from the begin- 

 ning of spring until the autumn. It is oval-shaped, and rather convex, with 

 fine spots and hairs on its metallic wing-covers, and is black or violet above. 

 The legs are pitch-black or dark brown, and its total length about an eighth 

 of an inch. 



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