INSECT A. 
1 45 
hay fields. Often it may be seen crawling lazily across the surface 
of a roadway or roadside bank, and frequently lying dead in numbers 
along the liighway-road. Mr. Wollaston writes of it : “ The South- 
African If. orator appears to be common at St. Helena, where it was 
taken by the late Mr. Bewicke in 1860, and subsequently in con- 
siderable abundance by Mr. Melliss. It is conspecific with the 
insect characterized by Blanchard in the Entomological portion of 
Dumont d’Urville’s ‘Voyage au Pole Sud sur les Corvettes P Astro- 
labe et la Zelee ’ (p. 105, pi. 7, f. C) under the title of If. sando}- 
helerus.” 
Mellissius (Bates), Woll. 
With reference to this genus, Mr. Wollaston writes : “ The 
structural features of the group bring it into close proximity to the 
Australian genera Choiroplatys and Isodon ; but a reference to the 
diagnosis will show that it is abundantly distinct from them both. 
Unlike them, also, it appears, at any rate in one of the two species 
described below, to have organs for slight stimulation ; and its pro- 
thorax is apparently entire in both sexes (for as it is so in fifteen 
'males which are now before me, we may conclude that this is equally 
the case in the opposite sex) ; and its anterior male tibiae are not 
enlarged as in Cleiroplafgs. The Mellmii are practically apterous, 
their wings being very small and rudimentary, and they seem to be 
eminently fossorial. In its simple (or unimpressed) prothorax the 
genus agrees with the European and African group Penlodon ; but, 
apart from other differences, the members of the latter have their 
organs for stridulation exceedingly conspicuous, occupying, however, 
the central part only of the propygidium.” 
*M. eudoxus, Woll. — A shiny chocolate-coloured Beetle, com- 
mon under the grass and surface-soil of pastures on the high lands. 
*M. adumbratus, Woll. — A species somewhat similar in size and 
colour to the last, but, being larger, more of a red-chocolate colour, 
ai >d less glossy, is easily distinguished from it. Both species are 
plentiful, and occur in similar localities. Their larvae, the large, 
tat, whitish grubs called “ hog-worms,” play so important a part in 
the destruction of the grass on some of the high lands, by feeding 
011 its roots, that large patches, and sometimes whole fields, are laid 
bare. General Beatson writes thus :* “ There is a white maggot 
# JBeatson’s Tracts. 
h 
