24 CURIOSITIES OF 'ENTOMOLOGY. 



tions by which the surface of the elytra are variegated, was so 

 rare a very few years ago that some considered it not truly 

 indigenous; but it has since been captured in some numbers, 

 in consequence of the discovery that moths were attracted by 

 melted sugar brushed on the bark of trees at night, which 

 happened to prove equally attractive to our night-roaming 

 beetle, Carabus intrwatus, and numbers were taken by the 

 newly discovered bait. The "golden beetle," Carabus auratus, 

 belongs to the same genus, and is perhaps the handsomest of 

 the native Carabi. This species, like many of the Car obi, is 

 carnivorous, and is called by the French Le Jardinier, as the 

 enemy of cockchafers. It attacks the female when in the act 

 of depositing her eggs, and so destroys at once a whole brood 

 of those destructive insects. The Carabidce, which are carni- 

 vorous, thus feed on other beetles which are herbaceous feeders, 

 just as carnivorous quadrupeds prey upon those that are 

 herbivorous. 



The Carabus Hispanus (Fig. 9) is not indebted to a tropical 

 sun for his superior brilliancy; for, on the contrary, his 

 habitat is on the borders of eternal snow, in the Alpine 

 regions of Central Europe. In the first place he is nearly 

 twice the size of our native Carabi, but the size is his least 

 attraction. It is in his brilliant metallic colours that his 

 great beauty chiefly consists. The head and corslet are of the 

 richest metallic purple, while the elytra, or wing-cases, are of 

 the most dazzling olive gold, so solidly brilliant that chased 

 and burnished metal itself could not surpass it. In the lights 

 this golden glitter becomes a yellow, while in the shades it 

 assumes a ruddy tone, becoming richly crimson in a narrow 



channel round the edges. 



