234 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 
ball when alarmed, and can thus secure themselves—the 
upper surface of the body being remarkably hard, and 
impenetrable to their weapons—from the stings of those 
Hymenoptera whose nests they enter with the view of 
depositing their eggs in their offspring. Latreille noticed 
this attitude in Parnopes carnea, which, he tells us, 
Bembex rostrata pursues, though it attacks no other si- 
milar insect, with great fury; and, seizing it with its feet, 
attempts to dispatch it with its sting, from which it thus 
secures itself?. F 
Other insects endeavour to protect themselves from 
danger by simulating death. ‘The common dung-chafer 
(Geotrupes stercorarius, Latr.) when touched, or in fear, 
sets out its legs as stiff as if they were made of iron-wire 
—which is their posture when dead—and remaining 
perfectly motionless, thus deceives the rooks which prey 
upon them, and like the ant-lion before celebrated? will 
eat them only when alive. A different attitude is as- 
sumed by one of the tree-chafers (Hoplia pulverulenta) 
probably with the same view. It sometimes elevates its 
posterior legs into the air, so as to form a straight verti- 
cal line, at right angles with the upper surface of its 
body.—Another genus of insects of the same order, the 
pul-beetles (Byrrhus F., Cistela Marsh.), have recourse 
to a method the reverse of this. They pack their legs, 
which are short and flat, so close to their body, and lie 
so entirely w/thout motion when alarmed, that they look 
like a dead body, or rather the dung of some small ani- 
mal.—Amongst the weevil tribe, the species of Illiger’s 
genus Cryptorynchus (Rynchenus ¥., Curculio Latr.), 
a Ann. du Mus. 1810. 5. » Vor. I. 4th Ed. p. 428. 
