BEETLES. 353 



metallic-green color with bro\ynish legs, is very common on various kinds of small 

 fungi growing on bark of dead trees and stumps. The male is distinguished from the 

 female by two slender horns that surmount the head ; the female has the general 

 aspect of a small species of Chrysomelidte. The species of Platydema are oval, some- 

 what flattened beetles, and have the first joint of the posterior tarsi longer than the 

 second and third joints. Their larvae feed upon fungi under bark. 



In the genus Tenebrio are included black, elongated, winged beetles, in which the 

 antennae are gradually thickened toward the tip, the epipleuras entire, the legs slender, 

 and the entire insect of a dull-black color. The larva of T. molitov is 

 the well-known meal-worm, and all stages of the insect are found about 

 granaries and bake-houses, where they are very destructive to stored 

 grain and all farinaceous matter. Some of the species of Tenebrio are 

 found about decaying wood, and Chapuis and Candfeze write that these, 

 as well as other larvffi of Tenebrionidae, may be distinguished from the 

 larvee of Elateridae — the wire-worms — which they so closely resemble, fxg. 397. — I'ene- 

 " by the structure of their mouth-parts, that is by the attachment of ™ " *''"™'' 

 the lobe to the basal piece of the maxillae, and by their visible clypeus and labrum." 



Upis ceramboides, a black beetle with slender legs, common in the eastern United 

 States, is about 0.75 of an inch long. Its thorax is finely punctate when examined 

 with a lens, although it appears smooth to the naked eye ; its elytra are deeply and 

 irregularly indented. It is found under bark, as is also Iphthimus opacus, a beetle of 

 about the same size, which has both thorax and elytra coarsely piunctured. Nyctobates 

 pennsylvanica, found in the same regions as Upis ceramboides, resembles the latter in 

 form and size, but has elytra upon which fine punctures are arranged in very regular 

 striae. 



Ill California and Arizona are three genera — iSienotrichus, Cratidics, and Am- 

 phidora — which, contrary to the general rule in Tenebrionidse, are densely pubescent 

 with long, erect hair ; the species are all wingless. One of the largest of these pubes- 

 cent species is Cratidus osculans, which is about 0.6 of an inch long, black, densely 

 punctate, and out of each minute depression arises an erect brown hair. 



Blaps and Eleodes, two well-known genera of the Tenebrionidae, belong to a group 

 in which the connate elytra partly embrace the body, and in 

 which the tarsi are spinose or setose beneath. Blaps is a genus 

 containing numerous species distributed over Europe, northern 

 Africa, and western Asia. B. mortisaga, a common European 

 species, has been introduced into America, and is abundant at Alex- 

 andria, Va. It is about an inch long, entirely black, and is found 

 in cellars, caverns, and other obscure places, where it feeds upon 

 animal refuse. The larva of Blaps is similar to that of Tenebrio, 

 but larger, and lives in obscure nooks. Eleodes contains about 

 fifty species, which are all found in the western United States, 

 FiG.'sgs.— i(/apsmor- wlicre they devour excrement and dead matter*, and seem to fill 

 ti$aga. ^^ place Occupied in the eastern hemisphere by Blaps. Some of 



the species of Eleodes are quite large, E. obscura, a robust species, and E. gigantea, 

 a slenderer species with long legs, being about 1.25 inches long. 



Dr. G. H. Horn stated in 1867 that certain Calif ornian species of Eleodes, when 

 disturbed, elevate the abdomen nearly vertically, and if seized discharge an oily fluid 

 from the abdomen. An analogous disagreeably odorous secretion is used as a defence 

 VOL. II. — 23 



