254 
Psyche 
[December 
HOW A BEETLE FOLDS ITS WINGS 
Wm. T. M. Fokbes. 
Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. 
When I was a boy in high school I became interested in in- 
sects, and started a collection. Having no adviser to misguide 
me I carefully pinned all my beetles through the scutellum and 
spread them like butterflies, which made a curiops-looking 
collection, but developed in me an interest in the wings of beetles 
that has not yet faded. The title of this paper is one of the first 
questions that I asked, and one of the many to which I found no 
answer. The present answer is merely a hint, but I think, 
correct so far as it goes. 
The first suggestion one would make, and I think the one 
that has been hinted at in the literature, is that the beetle wihg 
is in its resting position straight and stiff, like that of ahy other 
insect, and that the beetle folds it and packs it away with the 
help, perhaps of its hind legs, perhaps of the tip of its abdomen. 
I think this answer is partly correct, most nearly so ill such 
Clavicorns as the Nitidulidse and Coccinellidse, where when the 
wing is released it snaps open ready for flight. But in the more 
familiar of the larger beetles, such as the Adephaga and Serri- 
cornia, it will be found that the natural condition of the wing is 
folded, completely or almost completely, and the question arises 
how the wing is opened, and what holds it stiff for flight. The 
present paper aims at answering this question. 
Serricornia, 
Let us take a beetle of somewhat simple type of folding, — 
the Lampyrid, Telephorus (figs. 1-3). Remove the elytron and 
pull forward on the costa of the wing. We will find the wing 
swings out from the body as a folded bundle until it is almost 
in the flying position, while the anal area unfolds. Finally the 
anal area is completely unfolded and a strain comes on the disc 
of the wing. Then suddenly the fanlike fold in the middle of the 
wing opens, and at the same moment the apex unfolds and 
flattens out. Now let us see the possible mechanism. 
