344 NATURAL HISTORY. 



latitudes, one species only occurring in Europe, in the maritime districts of the Mediterranean. The 

 ANTHKIBID^E have a short and robust rostrum, and long, slender antennae, terminated by a club of from 

 three to five joints. They are clothed with fine pubescence, variegated with various shades of brown 

 and grey. They differ from Curculionidse by the presence of an upper lip. They are lignivorous, with 

 the exception of a limited number, which live on woody boleti on trees. The BRUCHID^E are insects 

 of short and broad forms, i-emarkable for the thickened hind thighs and the inclined head, furnished 

 with a short snout. They are pre-eminently granivorous insects, all the species whose habits are 

 known living at least, in their larval stage in seeds. A large number infest cultivated kinds of peas 

 and beans, one (Bruckus pisi), being a well-known pest in granaries ; its Iarva3 are so numerous in 

 some years in Germany as to destroy thirty per cent, of the pea crop. The tropical species of the 

 genus Caryoborus prefers the nuts of palm-trees, some of which, of stone-like hardness, are not proof 

 against their short, but strong, curved mandibles. Fourteen species of the family are found in Britain. 

 By the structure of their buccal organs they seem to form a connecting link between the Rhynchophora 

 and the other two great divisions of the section Tetramera, the LONGICORNIA and the PHYTOPHAGA. 



TRIBE LONGICORNIA. 



The numerous tribe of Longicoms, or " long horns " so called from the great length of antennse 

 which distinguishes the majority of its constituents comprises a vast variety of generic and specific 

 forms, conspicuous for the grace and beauty of their outlines and the elegance of their colours and 

 markings, qualities which have rendered them great favourites with collectors. In size they rarely 

 fall below the average dimensions of Coleopterous insects, whilst many of them reach a gigantic length, 

 Titanus gigas, of Cayenne and the Amazons, and Xixuthnis heros, of the Fiji Islands, reaching half a 

 foot in length, and being amongst the largest of known Beetles. The antennse, though normally composed 

 of long cylindrical joints, are subject to great diversity in length, shape, and ornamentation, and vary 

 in important details of structure. The usual number of joints is often departed from, species occurring 

 with as many as twenty, and in form they exhibit an endless variety ; the joints, generally simple and 

 linear, becoming furrowed or spined on one or both sides, or assuming, some of them a clavate, 

 ovate, or even bulbous form, or branching laterally, giving to the organs a saw-like, pectinate, or fan- 

 like appearance, or, again, presenting ornamental tufts of hair tinted with contrasted colours. The 

 general Longicorn type is, however, preserved amidst all these and other variations. 



Like the rest of the Tetramera, the Longicornia are exclusively vegetable feeders, but they are 

 less varied in their food and habits than the Rhynchophora. The perfect insects are met with on the 

 trunks or branches of trees, gnawing the wood or bark, or imbibing sweet sap exuding from wounds 

 in the trees, on leaves and flowers. The larvae resemble in form those of the Buprestidae before 

 described, having a dilated prothorax ; they are fleshy grubs, provided with three pairs of minute feet, 

 often quite rudimentary, and well-developed maxillary and labial palpi. They live, according to their 

 species, either under the bark of trees or in the interior of the wood, some feeding on roots, but none 

 are known to attack fruit or seeds. Some, however, are often very injurious to fruit-trees, as, for 

 instance, the " apple-tree borer " of the United States, a species of Saperda, the larva of which, 

 emerging from an egg laid by the parent insect in the bark, eats its way through to the sap-wood of 

 the tree, where it feeds up, and when half grown farther penetrates to the heart of the tree, living 

 for three years in this stage, and when ready to undergo its transformations returning towards the 

 surface, and passing into the pupa state in a little cell which it forms under the bark. In forest 

 countries, whenever a dead tree is met with, the heart-wood is sure to be found infested with species 

 of Longicornia, often in both the larval and adult conditions. It is thus that many of the large 

 species belonging to the Prionince sub-family are found. In the pine-woods of North America two 

 large species of this group are found in this way, viz., Ortkosoma cylindricum and Prionus brevicornis, 

 the latter of which, like many other insects, has transferred its attentions from indigenous species of 

 trees to the introduced fruit-trees of the orchard, destroying plum and pear-trees and the grape-vine. 

 Upwards of 8,000 species of Longicornia are at present known to science, the forest regions within 

 and near the tropics, as may be supposed, yielding by far the greatest number. Fifty-five only 

 inhabit the British Islands, and the whole of Europe contains only about 500. Notwithstanding 

 the great diversity of their structure, they form but one natural family, the CERAMBYCIDJS. Thi;. 



