LUCANIDJE. 163 



is very extensive, and contains some of the largest and most con- 

 spicuous species of the order; many of which are no less di- 

 stinguished for their magnitude, than by the very extraordinary 

 forms which they present, from the horn-like and tubercular pro- 

 cesses which arm the head and thorax of several : few, however, of 

 these conspicuous insects inhabit Britain, though some of the largest 

 indigenous species belong to this group. 



The larvae have the body long, nearly semicylindric, soft, flexible, 

 rugose, and whitish, composed of twelve rings, with a scaly head, 

 armed with strong mandibles, and with six scaly legs ; on each side 

 are nine stigmata : the hinder extremity is more robust, rounded, 

 and nearly always curved under, which causes the animal to walk 

 with difficulty, as, from the curvature of the back, it falls over con- 

 tinually from side to side : — many of them are three or four years 

 before they change to pupa, which they do in an oval cocoon formed 

 of a glutinous substance mixed with the remains of the materials 

 upon which they feed, either in the earth or the decayed trunks of 

 trees : their food is various, some families subsisting upon putrid 

 vegetable remains, others upon vegetables in a living state, as 

 more particularly noticed hereafter. 



The Lamellicornes are naturally divisible into two groups, the 

 first of which answers to the Prioceri of Dumeril, and the second to 

 the Petalocera of the same writer : the first group, corresponding 

 with the Lucanides of Latreille, contains only one indigenous 



Family XXIV.— LUCANID^, Leach. 



Antenna geniculated, mostly ten-jointed : basal joint very long, subcylindric, 

 the capitulum pectinated or somewhat perfoliated, and consisting of three or 

 four lamella? : labrum indistinct : maxilla? setose : labium membranaceous, 

 concealed beneath the mentum, with two hirsute pencil-like lacinia? : head 

 large, exserted; mandibles, especially in the males, very large : thorax with 

 its hinder margin not very remote from the base of the elytra, which latter 

 are as long as, and conceal, the abdomen : legs, especially the anterior, generally 

 elongated : claws large, with a bifid unguiform process between them. 



The insects of this family have, doubtless, considerable affinity 

 with those of the foregoing, as so admirably pointed out by Mr. 

 MacLeay, in the Horse Entomologinse : their larvae inhabit the 

 trunks of trees, upon which, or in wood, the imago occurs. 



