MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 



191 



placed her egg in it against the side below the level of the 

 pollen-paste, so as to prevent the mason-bee from seeing it 

 on her return. 1 



Other insects endeavour to protect themselves from danger 

 by simulating death. The common dung-chafer (Geotrupes 

 stercorarius) 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 de- 

 ceives the rooks which prey upon them, and like the ant-lion 

 before celebrated will eat them only when alive. A different 

 attitude is assumed by one of the tree-chafers (Hoplia pulve- 

 rulenta), probably with the same view. It sometimes elevates 

 its posterior legs into the air, so as to form a straight vertical 

 line, at right angles with the upper surface of its body. — 

 Another genus of insects of the same order, the pill-beetles 

 (Byrrhus), 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 without motion when alarmed, 

 that they look like a dead body, or rather the dung of some 

 small animal. — Amongst the weevil tribe, most of the species 

 of Germar's genus Cryptorynchus, including several modern 

 genera or subgenera, when an entomological finger approaches 

 them, as I have often experienced to my great disappointment, 

 applying their rostrum and legs to the underside of their 

 trunk, fall from the station on which you hope to entrap them 

 to the ground or amongst the grass ; where, lying without 

 stirring a limb, they are scarcely to be distinguished from the 

 soil around them. Thus also, doubtless, they often disappoint 

 the birds as well as the entomologist. — A little timber-boring 

 beetle (Anobium pertinax, and others of the genus have the 

 same faculty), which, when the head is withdrawn somewhat 

 within the thorax, much resembles a monk with his hood, has 

 long been famous for a most pertinacious simulation of death. 

 All that has been related of the heroic constancy of American 

 savages, when taken and tortured by their enemies, scarcely 

 comes up to that which these little creatures exhibit. You 

 may maim them, pull them limb from limb, roast them alive 



1 Encycl. Method, x. 8. Lacordairc, Introd. a VEntom. ii. 488. 



