Chap. XIL] THE COCO-NUT BEETLE. 
407 
pensable for the due performance of the useful func- 
tions they discharge. 
The Coco-nut Beetle. — In the luxuriant forests of Ceylon 
the extensive family of Longicorns 1 and Passalicloe 
live in destructive abundance. To the coco-nut plan- 
ters the ravages committed by beetles are painfully 
familiar. 2 The larva of one species of Dynastidce, 
the Oryctes rhinoceros, called by the Singhalese " Gas- 
cooroominiya" makes its way into the younger trees, 
descending from the top, and after perforating them 
in all directions, forms a cocoon of the gnawed wood 
and sawdust, in which it reposes during its sleep as a 
pupa, till the arrival of the period when it emerges as a 
perfect beetle. Notwithstanding the repulsive aspect of 
the large pulpy larvae of these beetles, they are esteemed 
a luxury by the Malabar coolies, who so far avail them- 
selves of the privilege accorded by the Levitical law, 
which permitted the Hebrews to eat ce the beetle after 
his kind." 3 
Amongst the superstitions of the Singhalese arising 
out of their belief in demonology, one remarkable one 
is connected with the appearance of a beetle when ob- 
served on the floor of a dwelling-house after nightfall. 
The popular belief is that in obedience to a certain 
form of incantation (called cooroominiya-pilli) a demon 
1 The engraving on the pre- beetles. The writer had recently- 
ceding page represents in its va- passed through several coco-nut 
rions transformations one of the plantations, "varying in extent 
most familiar and graceful of the from 20 to 150 acres, and about 
longicorn beetles of Ceylon, the two to three years old; and in 
Batocera rubus. these he did not discover a single 
2 There is a paper in the Journ. young tree untouched by the coo- 
of the Asiat. Society of Ceylon, roominiya." — P. 49. 
May, 1845, by Mr. Cappeb, on the 3 Leviticus, xi. 22. 
ravages perpetrated by these 
l> D 4 
