MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 443 



by which they sometimes strike beholders, especially children, often great 

 insect tormentors, with alarm, and so escape. The terrific and protended 

 jaws of the stag-beetle {Lncanus Cervus) in Europe, and of the stag-horn 

 Capricorn beetle {Prionus Cervicornis) in America, may save them from 

 the cruel fate of the poor cockchafer^ whose gyrations and motions, when 

 transfixed by a pin, too often form the amusement of ill-disciplined chil- 

 dren. The threatening horns also, prominent eyes, or black and dismal 

 hue of many other Coleoptcra belonging to Linne's genera Scarabaus, 

 Cicindela, and Carabus, may produce the same effect. 



But the most striking instances of armor are to be found amongst the 

 homopterous Hemiptera. In some of these, the horns that rise from the 

 thorax are so singular and monstrous, that nothing parallel to them can be 

 found in nature. Of this kind is the Cicada spinosa Stoll^, the Centroius 

 davatus^, and more particularly the Centrotus globularis^, so remarkable 

 for the extraordinary apparatus of balls and spines, which it appears to 

 carry erect, like a standard, over its head. What is the precise use of all 

 the varieties of armor with which these little creatures are furnished it is 

 not easy to say, but they may probably defend them from the attack of 

 some enemies. 



Under this head I may mention the long hairs, stiff bristles, sharp spines, 

 and hard tubercular prominences with which many caterpillars are clothed, 

 bristled, and studded. That these are means of defence is rendered 

 more probable by the fact that, in several instances, the animals so distin- 

 guished, at their last moult, previous to their assuming the pupa (in which 

 state they are protected by other contrivances), appear with a smooth 

 skin, without any of the tubercles, hairs, or spines for which they were 

 before remarkable.^ Wonderful are the varieties of this kind which insects 

 exhibit : — but I shall only here select a few facts more particularly con- 

 nected with my present subject. The caterpillar of the great tiger-moth 

 (Euprcpia Caja), which is beset with long dense hairs, when rolled up — 

 an attitude it usually assumes if alarmed — cannot then be taken without great 

 difficulty, slipping repeatedly from the pressure of the fingers. If its hairs 

 do not render it distasteful, this may often be the means of its escape 

 from the birds. That little destructive beetle, Anthrenus Musorum, which 

 so annoys the entomologist, if it gets into his cabinets, when in the larva 

 state being covered with bunches of diverging hairs, glides from between 

 your fingers as if it were lubricated with oil. The two tufts of hairs near 

 the tail of this are most curious in their structure, being jointed through 

 their whole length, and terminating in a sharp halberd-shaped point.^ I 

 have a small lepidopterous caterpillar from Brazil, the upper side of which 

 is thickly beset with strong, sharp, branching spines, which would enter 

 into the finger, and would probably render it a painful morsel to any minor 

 enemy. 



' One would almost wish that the same superstition prevailed here which Sparrman ob- 

 serves is common in Sweden, with respect to these animals. " Simple people," says he, 

 "believe that their sins will be forgiven if they set a cockchafer on its legs." Voyage, 

 i. 28. 



« Ci^nhx. f. 85. ^ jbid, f. 115. Coquebert, lllustr. Ic. ii. t. xxviii. f. 5. 



♦ Sioll, Cigaks, f. 163. Comp. Pallas, Spkit. Zool. t. i. f. 12. * Reaum. v, 94. 



« This was first pointed out to me hy Mr. Briggs of the post-office, who sent me an accu- 

 rate drawing of the animal and of one of its hairs. I did not at that time discover that it 

 bad been figured by De Geer, iv. t. viii. f. 1 7. 



