ORDER COLEOPTERA. 175 



terminated by a widened cloaca, furnished with two small 

 sacs Avhich secrete an acrid humour.* 

 They are divided into two tribes. 



* M. Leon Dufour has presented in the Annals of Natural Science, 

 Vol. viii. p. 36, the following recapitulation of the anatomical charac- 

 ters of the insects of this division. 



" The carabici are hunters and carnivora. The length of their diges- 

 tive tube does not exceed that of twice the length of their body. The 

 oesophagus is short. It is followed by a membrano-muscular crop, very 

 well developed and extremely dilatable. Then comes a gizzard, oval or 

 rounded, >vith cellular and elastic parieties, armed internally with mo- 

 bile corneous pieces, proper for trituration, and provided fvith a valvule 

 at its two orifices. The chylific ventricle which succeeds it is of a soft and 

 expansible texture, constantly bristling with papillae more or less promi- 

 nent, and narrowed in the hinder part. The narrow intestine is rather 

 short. The ccecum has the form of a crop. The rectum is short in both 

 sexes. The hepatic vessels are but two in number, in the form of an arc 

 variously folded, and are implanted in four isolated insertions around the 

 terminations around the chlyific ventricle. The testicles are formed each 

 by the agglomerated circumvolutions of a single spermatic vessel ; some- 

 times they are almost naked, sometimes clothed with an adipose bed, of 

 a sort of tunica vaginalis. The vasa deferentia are often refolded like an 

 epididymis. The vesicults seminalcs, two in number only, are filiform. 

 The ejaculatiorius is short, the penis narrow and elongated, and the 

 armatura copulatrix more or less complicated. The ovaries have but from 

 seven to twelve ovigerous sheaths to each, multilocular and united in a 

 cone-formed bundle. The oviduct is short. The sebaceous gland is com- 

 posed of a secretory vessel, sometimes filiform, sometimes swelled at the 

 extremity, and of a reservoir. The vulva is accompanied by two retrac- 

 tile crochets. The eggs are oblong-oval. The existence of an apparatus 

 of excrementitious secretion is one of the most prominent anatomical 

 characters of the carabici; it consists of one or more clusters of utricults 

 secretorice, the form of which varies according to the genera, of a lone; 

 efferential canal, and of a vesicle or contractile reservoir, of an excretory 

 conduit, the mode of whose excretion varies, and an excreted liquid 

 which possesses ammoniacal qualities. The respiratory organ has stigmata 

 or bivalve apertures, and trachecB altogether tubidar. The nervous system 

 does not differ from that of the coleopterain general. 



