104 INSECTS AT HOJIE. 



possessors of zoological collections know to their cost. It is the 

 Dermestes which forces taxidermists to use the dangerous 

 arsenical soap in their preparations, and it has been the means 

 of depriving- many a hard-working man of his best teeth, the 

 arsenic loosening them so that they fall out almost at a touch. 

 By way of a set-off, it is tlie Dermestes which drove the late 

 Mr. Waterton to the invention of his wonderful mode of taxi- 

 dermy, in which no arsenical soap is used, but by which the 

 skin is rendered so hard and elastic, that it is able to retain the 

 form of the animal without having a wire, a piece of wood, or 

 even a pinch of cotton wool inside it. Full many a valuable 

 museum has been utterly ruined by these destructive Beetles, 

 which, even when the skin is poisoned with arsenical soap, will 

 attack the hair or the feathers, and strip the creatm-e as bare as 

 if it had been shaved. Moses Harris, the old entomologist, 

 mentions that he found these Beetles alive in the body of a 

 living- Eyed-hawk Moth. 



This family is distinguished by their short, straight, and 

 doubled antennte, their small and retractile head, the five- 

 jointed tarsi, and the length of the elytra, which cover the 

 abdomen. In the typical genus, the antennae are shorter than 

 the thorax, and the club is egg-shaped, as seen at Fig. i on 

 Woodcut XI. The palpi are thread-like and shorter than the 

 maxillaj, and the first joint of the tarsus is shorter than the 

 second. P'or illustration of this genus I have selected the 

 well-knoAvn Bacon Beetle {Dermestes lardaHus), which is 

 shown on Woodcut XI. Fig. 6. 



This is really a pretty, though not gailv coloured. Beetle, its 

 body being black, and its elytra having a very broad greyish 

 band across the base, on which are three black or pitchy spots. 

 On examination with a lens, the band is seen to be composed 

 of a short but thick grey down, the black spots being simply 

 places on which the down does not grow, so that the black of 

 the elytra is rendered visible. 



This Beetle may be found plentifully in the ' keepers' trees ' 

 which have already been mentioned ; and even after the animals 

 have been so dried by exposiu-e that their skins are as hard as 

 horn, the Dermestes will attack them, its sharp teeth enabling 

 it to overcome the hardened skin. The chief havoc caused by 

 this Beetle is due to the jlarvae, one of which may be seec 



