81 



tipn of the many genera and species comprised in the family Materidce, the remainder 

 of this paper will be devoted to a few brief remarks on some of the more interesting for- 

 eign and native ones. 



Westwood states that the Elaters are less rich in species than the Buprestians, but 

 that they are more generally distributed. About four hundred and fifty North American 

 species are given by Le Conte in his classification, of which, perhaps, one-fourth are found 

 in Canada. During the past summer I collected in the immediate vicinity of Ottawa 

 fifty species, while of Buprestians I only obtained about half that number. 



There are perhaps no click-beetles that in form, size or markings are striking when com- 

 pared with many other families of beetles ; they vary but slightly in shape, are of moderate 

 size, and of dull hues generally. One genus, however, (Pyrojihorus, containing 30 or 

 more species) is indeed worthy of notice from the power of light-emitting possessed by 

 its members. If sombre by day they are the brightest of all insects when darkness 

 shrouds the world. I have before me a specimen of P. noctihtcus, the celebrated " fire- 

 fly of the West Indies and Central America, called by the Spaniards cucujo. Figure 

 51 represents this insect both at rest and on the wing. It is nearly an inch and a-half 

 long, (the elytra being exactly an inch from base to tips,) and has a tawny grey appear- 

 ance, caused by a covering of short yellowish hairs on a black surface. 



Fig. 51. 



Its most important features are two smooth, convex yellow spots, or tubercles, on 

 the thorax — one on either side — from which at night, when the beetle is alive, streams a 

 strong greenish light, far surpassing that of our own " fire-flies," or, correctly speaking, 

 " fire-beetles." When the beetles are on the wing another patch beneath the body emits 

 a bright orange-tinted light. 



These beetles and their larvae feed on the sugar-cane and do great damage to the 

 plantations, being in some places very numerous, so that the air at night is starred in 

 every direction with their myriad meteor-like fires. The natives, ever ready to connect 

 the visible with the unseen, call them, not unpoetically, the vehicles of departed souls, or 

 in other places they are said to be the souls themselves flitting about the earth they have 

 left, so that to kill one might be to crush the soul of a departed friend. Such beliefs in 

 connection with certain insects, snakes, and other animals have often been prejudicial to 

 savage welfare by protecting obnoxious creatures from destruction. 



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