400 ZOOLOGY. 



which follow the head have each of them almost always a pair 

 of limbs, generally very short; finally, then- exists in a great 

 number of these animals a pair of false limbs attached to the 

 last segment of the abdomen. The nymph is inactive, and 

 takes no nourishment; it is covered with a membranous skin, 

 applied exactly over the subjacent parts, and permits their 

 being seen. 



Most of these insects are remarkable for the hardness of 

 their integuments and the brilliancy of their colours. Some 

 are carnivorous, the gilded carabus (beetle) or gardener 

 (Fig. 7), so common in the sandy walks, for example; others, 

 as the may-bug, live on vegetables. Their number is im- 

 mense, and already thirty thousand species are known ; but 

 we shall limit ourselves here to mentioning only the scarabef, 

 of which one species (Fig. 379) is celebrated, by reason of the 

 respect with which it was viewed by the ancient Egyptians ; 

 the cantharides or Spanish flies (Fig. 382), which, in the 

 south of France and of Spain, live on the ash-tree and the 

 lilac, and furnish to medicine a very energetic blistering sub- 

 stance ; the weevils, which live on 

 grain; the vrillette (Fig. 378) (Ptinus), 

 and the wood piercers, which in the 

 state of larva perforate the wood of 

 old furniture and timber work ; the 

 dermestes (Fig. 380), whose larvae live 

 on the cast-off skins of other animals, 

 and often in this way destroy furriery 

 and zoological collections; finally, the 

 coccinella or bete a bon dieu, the 

 cicindela, the carabus (Fig. 7), <fcc. 



540. The orthoptera resemble 

 the preceding by the general dispo- 

 Fig. 382. Cantharis, sition of the organs of mastication, as 

 or Spanish Fly. ' well as by the number and con- 

 sistence of their wings, but are distin- 

 guished by the manner in which their posterior wings are 

 folded, and by the nature of their metamorphoses. The el yt IM 

 are less hard than in the coleoptera, and the membranous 

 wings (Fig. 383) when they are at rest are not folded trans- 

 versely, but merely longitudinally, in the manner of a fan. 

 They undergo only a semi-metamorphosis, and the larva as 

 well as the nymph resembles a perfect insect, excepting as 

 regards the wings. Finally, all are terrestrial, and n 



