COLEOPTERA. 



147 



that to most people they are only known by the sounds they produce, or the 

 holes with which the larvae riddle furniture and the woodwork of houses. The 

 holes with which old books are sometimes seen to be perforated are also made 

 by the larvae of a species of Anobium, which for this reason are known as book- 

 worms. 



SECTION HETEROMERA. 



The Heteromera are those beetles in which the tarsi of the fore and middle- 

 legs are five-jointed, those of the hind-legs being four-jointed. The Tenebrionidce 

 exceed in number of species the rest of the Heteromera together. The antennas 

 are inserted under a projecting angle or ridge on each side of the head, and 

 composed of eleven or, 

 exceptionally, ten joints, 

 of which the third is 

 generally the longest ; the 

 coxae of the front-legs are 

 usually rounded, with their 

 sockets separated by a 

 fairly broad prosternal 

 process, and completely 

 closed in behind ; and the 

 claws of all the tarsi are 

 simple. Many of the 

 obscurely coloured species 

 are without wings, and 

 frequently have the elytra 

 fused together. The 



churchyard beetles (Blaps) and the meal-worm (Tenebrio) are probably the best 

 known members of the family. B. mucronata is the commonest species in England; 

 it differs from B. mortisaga, which also occurs, though rarely, in this country, in 

 having shorter points to the elytra. Of the genus Tenebrio two species occur in 

 Britain, one of which (T. molitor) is almost cosmopolitan in its range, having been 

 carried in flour to nearly every part of the world. The larvae, 

 known as meal - worms, are long and narrow, of a light 

 yellowish red colour, with the integument hard, and the last 

 segment conical in shape and ending into two slightly diverging 

 processes, armed each with a small black spine. 



The Rhipidophoridce are a small but interesting family 

 of beetles in which the wings are always more or less exposed, 

 and not folded transversely as in most other groups, while the 

 elytra are either very short (as in the genera Rhipidophorus 

 and Rhipidius), or else triangular in form, meeting only at the 

 base and diverging from one another behind. 



The Meloidce are chiefly distinguished from the other Heteromera by having 

 the head abruptly constricted behind in the form of a short neck, the coxae of the 

 anterior and middle legs long and prominent, and placed close to one another in 



CHURCHYARD BEETLE AND LARVA (nat. size). 



THE COMMON MEAL-WORM 

 AND ITS LARVA 



(enlarged). 



