i 4 o INSECTS. 



ocellus ; the short antennae, consisting usually of eleven joints, are clubbed at the 

 end ; the abdomen is entirely covered over above by the elytra ; and the tarsi are 

 always five-jointed. While certain species are met with only on flowers, the 

 majority live in dried animal matter — furs, skins, and the like, as well as articles 

 of food, such as bacon and cheese. The perfect insects do comparatively little 

 damage, the real depredators being the larvae, including those of many species 

 which in the adult state frequent flowers. The larvae are little hairy creatures of 

 a dark colour, looking like small caterpillars, with the hairs sticking out straight 

 and arranged more or less in tufts or bundles. The larvae of Anthrenus musceorum, 

 the so-called museum-beetle, have to be carefully guarded against in museums, as 

 they are very destructive to zoological collections and more especially to those 

 of dried insects. Attagenus pellio is another very common species of this family, 

 usually found in houses, and well known on account of the ravages of its larva in 

 natural history collections, furs, hair-stuffed couches, etc. The larva is of a brown 

 or red-brown colour above, and covered with long hairs pointing backwards ; it 

 is broader in front and tapers towards the hinder end, where it carries a tail-tuft of 

 very long hairs. 



In the Hydrophilidce the antennae are short and composed of from six to 

 nine joints, of Avhich the first is relatively long, and the last three or so thickened 

 in the form of a club ; the mentum is a large shield-like plate without a notch in 

 front ; the lobes of the maxillae are not toothed, and the palpi are long and slender, 

 frequently much longer and more conspicuous than the antennae. These characters 

 afford a ready means of distinguishing these herbivorous water-beetles from the 

 carnivorous water-beetles, to which in general shape many of them bear a close 

 resemblance. The great length of the maxillary palpi has given rise to the name 

 Palpicomes by which the family was formerly known. In the perfect state, all 

 the members of the family feed upon vegetable matter ; but it is only those of the 

 subfamily Hydrophilince — of which the great water-beetle, Hydrophilus piceus, 

 may be taken as the type — that are truly aquatic in their habits ; the second sub- 

 family, the Sphceridiince, though including certain marsh-frequenting species, is 

 composed mainly of land-insects which are found chiefly in vegetable refuse or 

 in the droppings of herbivorous mammals. Of the Hydrophilince some are 

 found in stagnant, others in running water, but they are nearly all poor swimmers, 

 while a large number progress by simply crawling along the surface film upside 

 down ; in their slow movements they present a marked contrast to the active 

 predatory Dytiscidce. 



Having touched upon the principal families of the Clavicorn series, we pass 

 to the Pectinicornia, a small tribe containing only two families, one of which 

 has no European representative, while both are somewhat limited in the 

 number of their species. In the Lucanidce the antennae are ten-jointed, with the 

 first joint long and set at an angle with the rest of the antennae, of which from 

 three to seven of the last joints are furnished with rigid tooth-like processes on 

 one side. The outer lobe of the maxillae ends in a pencil of hairs, while the inner 

 lobe lias very often the form of a claw ; the ligula is membranous or leathery in 

 texture, and is attached to the inner face of the mentum ; the elytra cover over the 

 abdomen, which on the ventral side shows five or, in the male, six segments; 



