302 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



frequent sunny banks and bare places having a light soil, such as sandy sea-shores, banks of rivers, 

 and pathways on heaths and in woods. Here they hunt their prey, and pass through their earlier 

 stages, the larvae, soon after being hatched in the warm soil, burrowing deep cylindrical galleries more 

 or less vertical, in which they conceal themselves, their broad heads, armed with long mandibles, 

 closing the orifice and entrapping any unwary insect which falls in their way. Four species of true 

 Cicindelse are found in the British Islands, the commonest of which (Cicindela campestris), abundant 

 in the southern counties, may be taken as a fair sample of the whole family. It is of a beautiful 

 light green colour, with opaque shagreened surface, the underside and legs having a brilliant coppery 

 and golden lustre. The elytra bear traces, in a number of small, whitish spots, of the characteristic 

 markings of the family, which occur in nearly the same position, but endlessly varied, in hundreds of 

 its species, and most frequently form a flexuous band across the middle, with crescent-shaped spots at 



the shoulders and the apex. 

 The bands are represented 

 in Cicindela campestris by 

 detached spots only, which 

 lie in the position of the 

 ends, or angles, of the 

 bands and "lunules," as the 

 crescent-shaped markings 

 are termed ; but in Central 

 and South- Eastern Europe 

 varieties of the English 

 species occur in which the 

 middle spots are linked 

 together by a white band 

 across each wing - case, 

 showing that these dif- 

 ferent patterns are but 

 modifications of one type. 

 The other British species 

 are Cicindela sylvatica, 

 found only on heaths in the 

 southern counties ; Cicin- 

 dela maritima, occurring 

 on sandy sea-shores in the east and south, and as a distinct local variety in Lancashii'e; and Cicindela 

 germanica, which has been met with only in a few localities in the south of England. 



The genus Cicindela compi-ises more than half the species of the entire family. With the 

 exception that some of the species found on sandy shci'es in tropical and sub-tropical regions have the 

 legs developed to an extraordinary degree of length and tenuity, and that in others the white markings 

 are so greatly extended as to cover the whole surface of the elytra, there is no very wide difference 

 either in form or colouring between them and the English species. The largest and handsomest are 

 the richly-coloured Cicindela chinensis, abundant in rice-fields in China and Japan, and Cicindela 

 octoyuttata, an inch in length, a native of Assam. Some of the smaller species at times occur in 

 immense numbers on pathways in hot countries, rising like swarms of flies as one walks along 

 the streets of a tropical village. 



The other genera recede more in habits than in form from the typical Oicindelse. Thus tlio 

 Odontochilce, slender, dark-bronzed forms, ai-e found only in the shade of tropical forests; the 

 Oxygonias, most resplendent in colouring, fly and run about mossy boulders in mountain-torrents of 

 the Andes ; the Hiresice, of tropical America, and the Fherates, Collyrides, and Tricondylce, of tropical 

 Asia and the islands of the Malay Archipelago in all which the prominence of the eyes is carried to 

 an extreme are arboreal insects, running and flying after their prey along the branches and over the 

 trunks of trees in the virgin forests. The P/ueoxanthce, a species of which (Phcvoxantka klnyii) is 

 represented in our engraving, are remarkable in being nocturnal insects. They make very little use v 



CICINDELA CAMPESTKIS AND LARV.'E. 



