182 Prof.J. C. Schiodte on the Classification 



protuberance on the ventral surface of the ninth segment; this 

 latter exhibits exactly the same serrated margin as in the larva 

 of Elateridse — a circumstance which has hitherto been entirely 

 overlooked, perhaps because it is very little chitinized in Melasis; 

 and, finally, the larva of Melasis has no buccal cavity at all, but 

 only a very small opening for the mouth, so small that it can 

 only be observed with difficulty — a point hitherto overlooked, 

 but of the greatest importance. 



As soon as these facts are fully appreciated and properly 

 combined, every idea of an animal so constructed burrowing in 

 timber and feeding on it must at once be relinquished ; and if 

 we then examine the accounts before us, it will soon appear that 

 the investigators have not really seen what they and others 

 think they have seen. 



Guerin had the larva and the piece of wood he figures sent to 

 him from the Vicomte de Lamotte-Barace, and he therefore founds 

 his statements entirely on the written account of an unscientific 

 correspondent. 



Professor Nordlinger found the beetle sitting on an alder 

 branch 3 inches in diameter and perforated with galleries in all 

 directions. He asserts that " the deposition of the eggs certainly 

 takes place in the same way as in Buprestidse, the mother beetle 

 therein making use of clefts in the bark or even in the timber;'* 

 but as he does not say that he really has observed the process, 

 his assertion, in spite of its decided language, cannot be looked 

 upon as anything more than a mere supposition. He states, on 

 the other hand, that he did find a dead beetle with its head and 

 body half hidden in a " fly-hole " — that is, one of the openings 

 made by perfect insects on making their escape, at the end of 

 their transformation, from the timber on which they lived as 

 larvse; but he surmises that it only intended to hide itself there; 

 for he says, if the beetle had penetrated into the timber through 

 old burrows and deposited its eggs in the galleries, he thinks that 

 he must have met with beetles in such burrows, which he has 

 not. He adds, however, one observation which admits of no 

 other explanation than that the eggs had not been deposited 

 from the outside on the bark, but, on the contrary, in a burrow 

 inside the wood — namely, that he found quite young larvae in 

 the thick of the timber, several inches from the bark. From a 

 log of wood taken in one year, in November, beetles made their 

 appearance through several consecutive years, from which he 

 considers that the larva takes at least three years to complete its 

 development. The larva is found in the burrows in a bent-up 

 position, compressing the, wood-dust behind itself so as to I'orm 

 an arched cavity. The burrows are undulating, but only in a 

 horizontal plane*. 



* Stettin, entomol. Zeit. (1848) p. 225-226. 



