268 ENAMEL OF BEETLES. 



in form more elegant, our "Insect Tiger," "fierce, beautiful, 

 and fleet," the Cicindela campestris, with his emerald wing- 

 cases inlaid with ivory, and ruby-coloured breast and legs, 

 coursing in hot and sandy districts after insect prey. Nor 

 amongst our numerous Carabi, a predatory tribe of usually 

 much more sombre hue, are there wanting some distinguished 

 individuals worthy to compete with the Cicindelce, or with 

 the most admired exotics of the beetle race.* 



But we must have done with enamelled and metallic paint- 

 ing, or where shall we find space to notice, finally, another 

 species of decoration, which confers on certain among insect 

 forms an apparent relation yet closer with the mineral king- 

 dom, that semblance, we mean, of gilding, which they not 

 unfrequently exhibit in common only, we believe, with some of 

 the most highly decorated of fishesf and of serpents ? ;f But 

 it may not be amiss here to unite our two divisions of painting 

 and gilding by Kirby's general view of insect decoration, re- 

 ferring, as it does, to both. In this he tells us, that " Nature, 

 in some, imitates marble ; to others, gives robes of network. 

 Some she blazons with heraldic insignia, giving them to bear, 

 in fields sable, azure, vert, gules, argent, and or, fesses, bars, 

 bends, crosses, crescents, stars, and even animals.S On others 



* Especially Carabus niiens, 



t As the Gold, and Silver, the John-Dorey, the Gilthead, the Schomber 

 tus, &c. 



J As the Coluber Atratutta, resplendent in scales of burnished gold, &c. 

 Ptinus imperiaUs. 



