COLEOPTEROUS INSECTS. 
89 
mery,” which people the gay parterres of a tropical 
landscape, and embellish them 
With their rich restless wings, that gleam 
Variously in the crimson beam 
Of the warm west — as if inlaid 
With brilliants from the mine, or made 
Of rainbows. 
These insects occur in almost every country 
capable of supporting animal life. Even the un- 
genial sun of Greenland and Iceland awakes to a 
short and precarious existence a few small species, 
which endure, or rather escape from, the rigours of 
an arctic winter, by a kind of hybernation partly 
analogous to that of some vertebral animals. In the 
higher latitudes, however, of Melville Island and 
Winter Harbour, no coleopterous insect has been 
observed ; and even the pestilent mosquito, which 
spreads over almost the entire surface of the habita- 
ble globe, extracting its nutriment equally from the 
tropical Indian and the greasy hide of the Lapland- 
er, appears unable to encounter the icy atmosphere 
of these hyperborean lands. It may indeed excite 
surprise that creatures of so fragile a nature should 
be found at all in such countries as those just 
mentioned ; but it must be borne in mind, that they 
not only pass certain periods in the pupa or torpid 
state, but are usually, while in that condition, deeply 
buried in the earth. “ What they chiefly require,” 
Mr Macleay observes, “ is the presence of heat 
during some period of their existence ; and the 
