COLEOPTEROUS INSECTS. 
115 
creatures that has been sometimes noticed in the 
higher animals, that the most blood-thirsty propen- 
sities are often combined with elegance of form and 
the highest beauty of colouring. They are adorned 
with the most beautiful tints of green and blue, with 
coppery or golden reflections, and the majority are 
variegated with spots and streaks of yellow. Their 
rapacity and agile movements have procured for 
them the name of Tiger-beetles. They prey indis- 
criminately on other insects, and few of the smaller 
kinds are capable of eluding or resisting their attack. 
The larvae are equally voracious with the perfect 
insect, but their locomotive organs being too im- 
perfect to enable them to attempt an open war, they 
have recourse to stratagem. In that early condition 
the body is long, white, and cylindrical, furnished 
with six scaly feet of a brown colour, and having 
two strong fleshy tubercles, like horns, rising from 
the back. It is entirely of a soft consistence, except 
the head, which is covered with a large rounded 
plate, and armed with two large jaws. These grubs 
dig cylindrical holes in the sandy soil where they 
love to reside, and lie in .ambush at the entrance, 
the opening of w T hich is completely closed by the 
broad scaly head. As the excavation is nearly per- 
pendicular at its mouth, the grub would have diffi- 
culty in retaining its position, were it not for the 
dorsal spines formerly mentioned, by which it sus- 
pends itself to the side of its dwelling. When lying 
in wait in this position, the jaws are expanded, and 
