o/" Buprestidse an</ Elateridse. 185 



stance, than the remarkable larva of Haliplus, which in so stri- 

 king a manner maintains the type of its family, whilst so widely 

 differing in external appearance. At the same time, perhaps, 

 there is not much reason to fear such an objection just at present ; 

 for although it is still constantly repeated that the larvae of Ela- 

 teridae are generally phytophagous, and only exceptionally take 

 animal food, I do not hesitate to assert directly the contrary — 

 namely, that they are carnivorous as a rule, and only exception- 

 ally phytophagous ; and the positive affirmation of this truth 

 has, so to say, long been looming in the horizon. Erichson 

 considers the larvse of Elateridae unreservedly as phytopha- 

 gous, some being supposed to feed on decaying wood, others 

 on fresh roots : nevertheless he was not without scruples, 

 for he adds, in a note, that he doubts whether larvae with 

 such a mouth really can masticate their food (Archiv f. Natur- 

 geschichte, 1841, i. pp. 87-88). Nor do I doubt that many a col- 

 lector, when his attention is drawn to the subject, will remember 

 very often to have met with these larvae under bark, in decaying 

 wood and wood-dust, engaged in the very act of piercing the 

 bodies of soft larvae and pupae, and thus be enabled to confirm 

 from his own experience those testimonies which already have 

 appeared at different times as to the carnivorous habits of the 

 larvae of Elateridae. It seems that the attention of some has 

 already been drawn to the analogy between the structure of their 

 ntouth and that of the larvae of Carabi; so that it may soon be 

 generally acknowledged, what I certainly hold to be the true 

 view, that they are as truly typical carnivorous animals as 

 the larvae of Carabi, and that they bite through the skin of 

 their prey, tear it to pieces, crush and suck it just like the larvae 

 of Carabi — with which tribe they also correspond in this parti- 

 cular, that a certain number of them, being on purpose en- 

 dowed with shorter and thicker mandibles, shorter legs, less 

 perfect armour of the point of the abdomen and of the anal 

 segment (that is, with less power of locomotion), eat their way 

 into juicy and farinaceous roots, destroying them in the same 

 way as the animal food of the majority is treated, by crushing 

 and sucking. It is a state of things quite analogous to what 

 we find in insectivorous and carnivorous mammalia, among 

 which the hedgehog, the badger, and the bear are distinguished 

 by modifications of the type, either in the movements of the 

 jaws, or in the teeth, or in both, which do not by any means 

 destroy the original carnivorous type, but nevertheless enable 

 the animal to extend its range of food to vegetable matter suffi- 

 ciently rich in nitrogen. 



If, now, we comprise within our view the whole division of 

 Sternoxi, starting from this new information we find that the 



