ELATKitiu^. INSECTS. AIalacodeumata. 
221 
Family — ELATERID^E (Sldp-JacJcs). 
Another prodigiously numerous family of insects, so 
called from the power they have of righting themselves 
if placed on their back, by a spring of their thorax and 
abdomen, a projecting process from the one fitting easily 
into a notch of the other. Fig. 101 represents the 
British Agriotes lineatus. Oxynopterus Cumingii is 
figured on Plate 2, fig. 11. 
Fig. 102 is that of the larva of Campylus linearis, 
which is of a very deep brown colour. Messrs. Chapuis 
and Candeze describe it as being found in the same 
place as that of the Athous hirtus, which the}’’ meet 
with in galleries of trees, or under the bark of old trees. 
Though most Elaters are plant-eaters, yet there is no 
doubt that some are carnivorous. 
Wireworms are too well known to require descrip- 
tion. Our farmers find that ground where their ravages 
have been carried on might as well have been burned. 
Fig. 103 is that of the grub of a very large species 
abundant in the United States, and conspicuous from 
the two large ocellated spots on its thorax, and hence 
named Alaus oculatus. This grub is two inches and a 
half long; the head is almost black; the three follow- 
ing segments are blackish-brown, and the remaining 
segro,ents are brownish-yellow. The body is depressed, 
and the segments have distinct contractions where the 
segments are connected. 
lustre. This light is of a yellow-green. The larvre 
are said to feed on the roots of the sugar cane, and 
they sometimes prove destructive to that plant. 
The Brazilian traveller is often charmed with the 
light of the fire-fly, which has a singular and mysterious 
effect at times. Drs. Kidder and Fletcher* when on 
the Oregon mountains, and overtaken by sunset, came to 
the edge of a crater-like hollow, whose centre was a 
thousand feet below them, and whose sides were covered 
with trees. One of them says, “ Before retracing my 
steps I stood for a few moments looking down into the 
Cimmerian blackness of thegulf beneath me; and while 
thus gazing, a luminous mass seemed to start from the 
very centre. I watched it as it floated up, revealing in 
its slow flight the long leaves of the Euterpe edulis,'\ 
and the minuter foliage of other trees. It came directly 
towards me, lighting up the gloom around with its 
three luminosities, which I could now distinctly see.” 
It was the Pyrophorus noctilucus — a longish click 
beetle of a dull blackish brown colour, and covered over 
with a short light brown pubescence. When walking 
or at rest, the chief light that it emits proceeds from the 
two yellow tubercles on the thorax, so conspicuous 
even in dead specimens ; but when flying, another lumi- 
nous spot is discernible on the hinder part of the thorax, 
and this is continued to the under side of the insect. 
In some parts of South America the ladies use them 
for adorning their hair or their robes by fast inclosing 
them within a thin gauze work. Prescott, the historian 
of the conquest of Mexico, records the terror with 
which they inspired the Spanish in 1520: — “The air 
was filled with ‘ cocuyos,’ a species of large beetle, 
which emits an intense phosphoric light from its body, 
strong enough to enable one to read by it. These 
wandering fires, seen in the darkness of the night, were 
converted by the besieged into an army with match- 
locks.” 
Section— MALACODERM AT A . 
Malacodermata, or Malacodermi, as some write the 
word : I may mention a few of the beetles of this 
group, such as the Cebrionid.®, with their curious 
females, so unlike the males, who find them in wet 
weather projecting from the ground. Some of them 
have curious flat cases in which the pupa is contained 
— such is the insect, allied to Atopa, described by the 
writer in vol. iii. of the third series of the “Annals of 
Natural History,” and figured on Plate 7. I figure 
the cylindrical larva of the Cehrio gigas. 
The different species of Pyrophorus seem to vary in 
their light-producing powers. Lacordaire has described 
the species he observed in Guiana, while Gosse has 
recorded his observations on the Jamaica species. The 
latter describes the Glow-fly, for so he calls this beetle, 
as having the light from the two thoracic tubercles 
visible even in broad daylight, when the insect is dis- 
turbed. When the beetle is handled these spots, 
previously of a dull white hue, gradually brighten up ; 
the centre of each tubercle first showing a point of 
light which in a moment spreads to the circumference, 
and increases in brilliancy till it blazes with a dazzling 
Fig. t04. 
Cylindrical larva of the Cebrio gigas. 
The family Rhipicerid^, with their beautiful fan- 
like antennte, whence their name is derived, are inter- 
esting — as some of them are natives of South America, 
such as the Rhipicera marginata figured on Plate 2, 
* Brazil and the Brazilians, p. 292. t A species of palm. 
