B1UTISII AND FOHEIGN BEETLES. 21 



delicate buff; the central ridges of the elytra being also of a 

 buff tone, with a metallic gloss of gold. 



Though exceedingly numerous, our native species of the 

 extensive order CurcuUonidcB are all small and insignificant, 

 while the exotic genera of this tribe contain many of the 

 most splendid insects yet known. For instance, Otiorhynchw 

 ligustri (Fig. 1), the common Curculio of the Privet, is of a 

 dull olive brown colour, with the tuberculatkms of the elytra 

 rather paler, and has no pretensions to beauty except perhaps 

 its general elegance of form, while his foreign relatives are 

 not only more than four times the size of our native kinds, 

 but their splendour of colour often equals, if it does not 

 surpass, that of the whole insect world. The Eupliolus 

 Schonherrii (Fig. 7) forms perhaps the most remarkable con- 

 trast among exotic species to our native Curculios, both in 

 size and beauty. This magnificent insect was discovered in 

 the island of Celebes, by the officers of " Ia Coqtiille," the 

 French ship of discovery that circumnavigated the world in 

 1833. The first specimen of this then unknown relative of 

 the Curcidios was taken at a little seaport of Celebes, called 

 Dory, one of the hottest parts of that intertropical region, and 

 which, in the general account of the voyage, is described as 

 swarming with resplendent insects of various kinds ; and it 

 was eventually placed in the collection of M. Chevrolat. 

 M. Guerin, describing it for the zoological section of the 

 voyage of " La Coquille," made it the type of a new genus, 

 which he called Eupholus, from the Greek words cv, fair, and 

 0oXir, a scale, in allusion to the powdery bloom, similar to 

 the minute scales of the wings of butterflies, with which its 

 elytra are covered ; which term was adopted by Boisduval 

 when he described other allied species discovered in the 

 voyage of the " Astrolabe." The representation in the plate 

 can L>ive but a faint idea of this subdued metallic kind of 



G 



lustrous bloom, but the general distribution of colour is well 

 represented. M. Guerin describes the ground colour as being 

 of a lovely glaucous green, slightly metallic, the corslet 

 being brilliant azure, passing off imperceptibly to a delicate 

 green at the edges ; the wing-cases having transverse stripes 



