328 NATURAL HISTORY. 



or twenty clays, only in the free, devouring leaves, pairing, and depositing its ova. Like nearly all 

 its tribe, it is active only in the twilight hours of evening, concealing itself by day among foliage. 

 In the years when it is abundant it devours the leaves of fruit-trees in gardens and orchards, as well 

 as its favourite elms and oaks, poplars and birch being the last to be attacked. Notwithstanding the 



attention with which this destructive insect 

 has been studied in France, no definite 

 means have been discovered of checking its 

 ravages. Farmers have been recommended, 

 as one means of lessening their numbers, to 

 plough and harrow their fields in early 

 autumn, when the grubs are closer together 

 and lie nearer the surface of the soil, and 

 hand-picking has been suggested, as well as 

 the encouragement of such useful insectivo- 



XYLOTKUPES DicHOTo.MA. Tous animals as the Mole and Shrew-mouse, 



and the various carnivorous Beetles, such 



as the Carabi. In the United States of America an allied Beetle (Lachiiosterna quercina), called the 

 May-bug, is equally destructive to pasture land, and such is the completeness with which the larvae 

 do their work on the roots of grass, that turf may sometimes be peeled off in large sheets, like a 

 carpet from a floor. 



The Rtdelina> t or Goldsmith-beetles, differ from Melolonthinie in their much thicker tarsi, the joints 

 of which are articulated closer together, and in their claws being unequal in size and not divergent. 

 They are mostly Beetles of polished metallic integuments, and diurnal in their habits, the strength 

 of the legs and the form of their bodies enabling them to cling firmly to the leaves of trees when not 

 on the wing. One large section of the group may be known by the membranous border of their 

 wing-cases. To these belongs the genus Anomala, of which about two hundred species are known from 

 various parts of the world, one (A. frisckii] being a well-known British Beetle. Some of the 

 large tropical American Rutelidce are amongst the most brilliantly-coloured Beetles in existence : such 

 are the species of the genus Plusiotis, whose burnished hides in some cases resemble silver or gold 

 both in colour and texture. They are found on oaks in the mountains of Central America. 



The Dynastince are nearly all of sombre black or dark brown colours. The smaller species 

 (Cyclocephala, Ligyrus, Heteronychus) show at most only the rudiments of the enormous horn-like 

 processes with which the larger species are 

 adorned. These weaker members of the 

 group occur sometimes in tropical countries 

 in countless swarms, especially in the sulti*y 

 evenings which introduce the rainy seasons. 

 At those times the town of Santarem, on 

 the Amazons, is visited by such multitudes, 

 attracted apparently by the lights of houses 

 and shops, and flying with such speed, that 

 the effect is like the pelting of a violent 

 hailstorm. Cydoceplialce frequent in large 



numbers the gigantic spathes of plants of MEGACERAS CHOKING s. 



the Arum family at the period of flowering, 



wallowing in the sticky pollen, and most likely serving in the cross-fertilisation of the plants as they 

 pass from one to another. Ligyrus bituberculatus feeds on sugar-cane, and is known to be at times 

 destructive to plantations in Demerara. Xylotrupes gideon and Oryctes rhinoceros attack the 

 cocoa-nut palm in Malacca. Among the great horned species, which are equally abundant in the 

 warmer countries of the New and Old Worlds, we give as illustrations Xylotrupes dichotoma, from 

 China and Japan, Megaceras chorinceus, from Cayenne and the Amazons, and Megasoma typhon, 

 from Brazil. Others are known with much larger horns, such as Dynastes hercules, from Guiana and 

 the West Indies, with its tapering thoracic horn projecting horizontally, and larger than all the rest 



