Beetles of British Guiana. 77 
mens are found.* The first thing which one notes about 
it are its formidable mandibles, which are longer than 
its head and thorax together, bent or arched inward 
towards each other, and each armed with seventeen sharp 
teeth, the tooth in the middle of each jaw being longer 
than the rest. Its head and thorax are of a rusty brown 
colour and the latter is armed at the sides with three 
sharp spikes. The ground colour of its wing-cases is a 
dark brown striped longitudinally with numerous narrow 
bands of reddish yellow which interrupt and run into 
each other. This gives the insecl a very picturesque 
appearance. The under part of its body and its legs are 
of a tame rusty colour. This inse6t is said to seize the 
twigs of trees and shrubs between its powerful jaws, 
and to whirl its body round and round until it cuts them 
through. Both WATERTON and Lacordaire believed 
this, though neither of them seems ever to have seen the 
beetle cut off a twig. I have myself once or twice seen 
twigs in the bush which appeared to have been sawn off 
their tree or shrub by something, and only the other day 
when waiting for the tide at the mouth of a small creek 
about twenty-five miles up the Essequebo I saw an 
apparently healthy green twig fall quietly from a height 
of about thirty feet into the water below. A native who 
was with me at the time assured me that the twig had 
been cut off by a sawyer-beetle of which he had given 
me a specimen the previous day. The mouth of the 
creek was so encumbered with mud, fallen trees, and 
bush, that I found it impossible to get near the twig 
* A specimen of this beetle, presented to the British Guiana Museum 
by Mr. John Wilkie, measures more than six inches in length. — Ed. 
