444 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVII. 



a brownish head, powerful jaws, 3 pairs of legs on the thoracic segments 

 and its posterior segments are curved round. The beetle is black;, shin- 

 ing, massive and large with a prominent horn, which curves backwards, 

 on its head. It is from this horn that it gets its name of rhinoceros 

 beetle. The wing cases are very convex above. There is a large 

 roughly heart-shaped depression on the front of the thorax behind the 

 head which, with the horn on its head, its general form andspined front 

 tibiffi, render the beetles easily recognisable and it is as well that this 

 should be so, for it is, as already stated, a ruinous pest. The insect in- 

 habits more especially the southern half of the Continent, being chiefly 

 confined to the areas in which the date palm, cocoanut, palmyra, &c, 

 trees flourish. It has been reported as plentiful in the Konkan, Kanara, 

 Salem, Kistna and Godavery Districts and is also abundant in Calcutta 

 and lower Eastern Bengal. The palms above mentioned suffer severely 

 from this pest. The beetle seeks out the crown of the tree at night and 

 settles on the growing shoot and bores down into this, thus eating- 

 through the folded young leaves so that when these expand they are 

 seen to be full of holes and to have a ragged appearance. In bad attacks 

 the leaf area is thus greatly reduced. It burrows down through the heart 

 of the cabbage, boring out a lai*ge tunnel in its operations and ejecting 

 from it a quantity of the fibre which remains protruding from the 

 entrance hole and is a certain sign of the tree being infested. If several 

 beetles attack the growing shoot the tree is sure to die. The beetle 

 lays eggs in dying or dead trees or in any adjacent refuse heaps. The 

 grubs on hatching out feed in these. It will be seen that it is therefore 

 absolutely essential that plantations should be kept clean of all refuse 

 and that all dead and dying trees should be cut out and burnt. The 

 grubs probably take more than a year to reach full size. The pupal or 

 tchrysalis stage is probably a short one and the insect does not feed in 

 his condition. The beetle is a clumsy lazy insect walking slowly and 

 rarely flying in the day time. It has a strong flight at night. It can 

 exist for several weeks without food of any kind. The insects prefer for 

 their operations dirty uncleaned plantations. Eupatorus cantori, of 

 which the $ and $ are shown in Plate III., Fig. 2, is a large shining 

 black beetle with redbrown outer margins to the elytra. It is an 

 inhabitant of Assam. Chalcosoma atlas is another large Dynastid 

 beetle common in India. It is dark green in colour with long horns. 

 Xylotrupes gzdeon, also from Assam, is shining black and the male 



