530 SUPPLEMENT 



mentioned genus we may remark, by the way, that there is 

 nothing to be observed, except its size and beauty. 



From the trichii it is more difficult to separate the ceto- 

 niae. That they do differ, however, in some material points, 

 is undeniable. 



The cetoniae are found during summer on umbellated 

 flowers, on composite flowers, on willows, poplars, flowering 

 shrubs, hedges, &c. They should not be confounded with 

 the cock-chafers, those most mischievous of all destructive 

 insects to the roots of every vegetable, and the leaves of every 

 tree. The cetoniae, in their larva state, scarcely do any 

 mischief to plants, and in their final form they frequent flowers 

 without doing them any injury. They content themselves 

 with the melliferous fluid contained in the bottom of the 

 corolla, and never attack either flowers or leaves. 



Many naturalists had given the name of platycerus, which 

 signifies broad horns, to some species of the genus Lucanus, 

 and this denomination was preserved to it by Geoffroy, who 

 distinguishes it by very just characters from that of scara- 

 baeus with which it had been confounded. But the name 

 Lucanus, which Scopoli gave to the same genus, in his 

 Entomology of Carniola, printed in 1763, a year before the 

 French naturalist had published his History of the Insects 

 of the Neighbourhood of Paris, having been adopted by 

 Linnaeus, has most generally prevailed. The denomination 

 of Geoffroy has, however, been applied to another generic 

 section formed by M. Latreille, at the expense of the Lu- 

 cani. 



Pliny has employed the word lucani, in speaking of the 

 horn-beetles. Fabricius tells us that he is unacquainted with 

 the origin of the word. The etymology is not, however, 

 very difficult. The ancients gave the name of Lucas, Lucana, 

 to the ox and the elephant. It is said that Pyrrhus had thus 

 named tlie elephant the first time that he saw it, because this 



