130 



COLEOPTERA. 



calculable damage. The females deposit their eggs in 

 the buds, yet young and tender, of our most useful vege- 

 tables, in nascent grains of corn, in the flowers of the 

 palm-tree and the coffee-plant. In such situations the larvae 

 are hatched, and find abundant food stored up around 

 them. Having completed their metamorphoses, the per- 

 fect insects eat their way out of their vegetable prison, 

 leaving behind them those round holes so often seen in peas 

 or grains of wheat. One well-known species only lives in 

 nuts, where it devours the kernel, converting the interior 

 into a mass of bitterness. Another lives- in cork, filling 

 the galleries which it excavates with an equally bitter sub- 

 stance, and this it is which gives the bitter disagreeable 

 flavour to " corked " wine. Many species, such as 



The Diamond Beetles (Curculio), are gorgeously appa- 

 relled, as is abundantly indicated by the names by which 

 they are designated. " Imperial," " royal," " sumptuous " 



FlG. 87. THE STAG-HORNED PRIONUS, AND DIAMOND BEETLE. 



are the humblest epithets * appropriate to their magni- 

 ficence. Diamonds and pearls, emeralds and rubies, gold 

 and sparkling gems, look paltry when compared with 

 their elaborate bedizenment. In the Brazils, the mimosa 



