GARDEN INSECTS. 



179 



Still keeping to insect friends, we now come to what may be 

 described as the ugliest, the most useful, and the most perse- 

 cuted of the huge group, in the familiar Devil's Coach-horse, 

 Ocypus olens. There is hardly a garden in the kingdom in 

 which this insect is not to be found, and regretfully must it be 

 admitted that there are very few where it receives that pro- 

 tection to which, in the interests of horticulture, it is entitled. 

 There can hardly be any doubt that its very boldness creates 

 enemies, for when molested by man the fearless little creature 

 will elevate its tail and open wide its powerful mandibles, as if 

 to say, " Come on." Of an insect so readily recognised no 

 description is, or at least should be, necessary. It may not, 

 however, be generally known that concealed 

 beneath the short elytra are some powerful 

 wings capable of carrying the insect a long 

 distance in a very short time. Fearless to a 

 degree, it wages war against the largest of 

 insect foes, and invariably proves victorious. 

 Ocypus olens, though perhaps the incarnation 

 of beetle ugliness, is an insect which every 

 gardener should welcome and do his best to 

 encourage and preserve. 



Two or three other species yet claim the 

 gardener's attention on account of their utility 

 — the familiar Ladybirds, the beautiful Glow- 

 worm, and the gloomily clad Pterostichi. The 

 Glowworm is of especial interest as being Yia. 38.— Ptero- 

 Britain's only light-bearing insect ; but its value stichus mamdus. 

 to the gardener and the farmer lies in the 

 fact that it destroys vast numbers of the destructive snails 

 belonging to the genera Zonites and Helix, and is strictly car- 

 nivorous in its tastes. It is the female which illumines our 

 southern country gardens in summer, and oftener still our 

 waysides, her mate being seldom in evidence except to the 

 entomologist. By the average person the female Glowworm when 

 picked up is not regarded as a beetle, and little wonder when one 

 looks at the soft larviform body quite destitute of wings (Fig. 37 b), 

 in this respect being in direct contrast to the male, which has 

 ample wings and wing-cases (fig. 37 a.) The larva?, too ; which 

 are often unearthed, are also very useful : they differ but little in 



