514 SUPPLEMENT 



as far as they exist they must be studied. All the great 

 authors which we have cited contain much that is of real 

 value, but of Avhich we shall be unable to avail ourselves, 

 without some attention to the dry and painful subject of 

 synonimy. 



The scarabaei are met with on the ground, or flying from 

 one place to another. They are usually found in rich and 

 humid situations, in garden beds, or in fields, towards the 

 root of old trees. The majority of them frequent dunghills, 

 and fat and moist soils, for the purpose of depositing their 

 eggs, but none of them live in the dung or excrements of 

 animals. 



It is in such places as we have last mentioned that the 

 larva of these insects is to be found. It resembles a soft 

 thick worm, usually curved into an arc. Its head is hard and 

 scaly, and provided with two short and filiform antennae. 

 The body is composed of thirteen tolerably distinct rings, 

 nine of which are provided with a stigma on each side. The 

 nymph is buried in the earth, and shut up in a sort of shell 

 constructed by the larva previously to its transformation. 

 The skin which covers its body permits us to see all the parts 

 which the perfect insect is to have. Their form is tolerably 

 well designed under the skin which covers them, and which 

 keeps them as it were swaddled up. 



We shall not repeat here all the absurd puerilities which 

 the greatest men of antiquity, such as Homer, Aristophanes, 

 Theocritus, Isidorus, Aristotle, Lucian and Pliny have writ- 

 ten on the Scarahcei or canthari, relative to their origin 

 habits, and sex. Should the reader be curious on this sub- 

 ject, he will find most of them detailed in MoufFet and Jonson. 

 What we have already said under the head Ateuchus, may 

 also, perhaps, apply to the insects we are now treating of, 

 namely, that the ancient Egyptians believing that they were 

 all males, and never coupled, sculptured those insects at the 



