Mr. A. White on the Pupa-case of a Coleopterous Insect. 285 



Westwood, M.A. Oxon. (the former the finest entomological 

 artist of an3^age), Mr.Waterhouse, Mr. Haliday, and Mr. Janson 

 (keen observers and entomologists), have studied the larvae of 

 insects generally, especially of the Coleoptera, and of those species 

 of Diptera and other orders which damage our crops or injure 

 our fruits and trees ; but yet an immense field lies before the 

 young — lies before the old observer. The eggs, larvae, and pupae 

 of not one out of fifty of our indigenous insects are known. 

 Of the hundred and eighty thousand species, or so-called species 

 of insects which inhabit the world, the metamorphoses of not 

 one in two hundred and fifty are ascertained. The eggs, larvae, 

 and pupa; of whole families are still desiderata. What a blank ! 

 and yet each insect has a history as long as (I should say, longer 

 than) that of the larva of the Goat-moth, so inimitably given by 

 Lyonet, of the Cockchafer by Strauss-Durckheim, and of those 

 insects so graphically, though more briefly, described by Leon 

 Dufour, by John Curtis, by Westwood, Haliday, Candeze, 

 Chapuis, Ferris, Goureau, Guerin-Meneville, Audouin, Blan- 

 chard, and others. What a field lies open before men like Dr. 

 Asa Fitch and Leconte of America— before future Abbots of 

 Georgia — rising naturalists here, like Lubbock, Trimen, and 

 others ! How well has Frederick Smith studied the habits of 

 our Hymenoptera ! — a "busy bee," as "industrious^' nearly as 

 an ant, as indefatigable, though not so angular and " touchy," 

 as a wasp, that naturalist is doing good work — work that will 

 yet tell. It is to be hoped that ]\Ir. Vernon Wollaston may find, 

 and investigate, the larvae and pup^e of some of the subjects of 

 that magnificent work, the ' Insecta Maderensia/ now that he 

 has so completely described the imagines of the Coleoptera of 

 Madeira. 



The work of the learned Drs. Candeze and Chapuis* on the 

 larvae of Coleoptera, with such additions as M. Coquerel and 

 others have since made, shows how just the above observations are. 



I have much pleasure in attracting the notice of natui-alists 

 to the cocoon of a species of Coleopterous insect from North 

 China, the figures of which, by young Mr. Mintern, revised by 

 Mr. Ford, render description less necessary. 



In selecting, from one of those boxes sent by Mr. Fortune 

 from Shang-hai and other parts of North China, such insects as 

 were desiderata, I was struck with, and took, three flat pod-like 

 cases, which, at the time, I judged to be the cases of some Tricho- 

 pterous insect, alhed to one of our " Caddis-worms." The cases 



* " Catalogue des Larves des Coleopteres, connues jusqu'a ce jour, avec 

 la description de plusieurs especes nouvelles," par Drs. F. Chapuis et 

 E. Candeze, in Me'm. Soc. Roy. Liege, t. viii. (1853) pp. 341-622, with 

 9 plates. 



