256 SUPPLEMENT ON THE CARNIVOROUS FAMILY 



lamellicorneS) &c,, pass many winters under ground, where 

 they feed on roots, or in the interior of the trunks of trees, 

 sheltered from the vicissitudes of the seasons. This is 

 observable in the horn-beetle, the May-bug, the capricornes. 

 In fine, there are coleoptera, such as rhinocerus, whose 

 larvas feed and undergo transformation in fruits and the 

 seeds of vegetables. It is in this dwelling, in the very centre 

 of their aliments, that these insects, in the nymph state, 

 pass all the cold season ; and they do not acquire wings and 

 begin to propagate their race, until the time when fecun- 

 dation takes place in the plants, in whose germs their eggs 

 are to be deposited. 



All the larvae of the coleoptera change their skin. 

 Moulting takes place many times, pretty nearly as in the 

 caterpillars of the lepidoptera. Four or five such changes 

 of skin have been counted in the larvae of Tenehrio. 



In the nymph state the coleoptera take no nourishment. 

 They are perfectly inactive and motionless, though all their 

 parts are clearly distinct. Immediately after their trans- 

 formation, all these nymphs are of a white, more or less 

 transparent, or yellowish, and exceedingly soft. The ma- 

 jority of them cover themselves in cavities, the walls of 

 which they have consolidated, so as to form of them a kind 

 of shell. Under a sort of rery thin epidermis, the corneous 

 sheaths, which are to form all the articulations of their 

 body, by lodging the muscles and viscera, are consolidated, 

 and variously coloured, until the insect has acquired sufficient 

 strength to break its shell, and appear in the open light ; 

 that is, if it be intended that it should seek its food at that 

 period of the day when the heat and light of the sun 

 exercise all their influence; or, in the shades of night, if, 

 like the lampyrides, the photophygi, and the ligophili, 

 darkness and obscurity are necessary to the preservation of 

 their race. 



