136 
COLEOPTERA. 
The following are the most striking peculiarities of the fam- 
ily to which the blistering beetles belong. The head is broad 
and nearly heart-shaped, and it is joined to the thorax by a 
narrow neck. The antennas are rather long and tapering, 
sometimes knotted in the middle, particularly in the males. 
The thorax varies in form, but is generally much narrower 
than the wing-covers. The latter are soft and flexible, more 
or less bent down at the sides of the body, usually long and 
narrow, sometimes short and overlapping on their inner 
edges. The legs are long and slender ; the soles of the feet 
are not broad, and are not cushioned heneatli ; and the claws 
are split to the bottom, or double, so that there appear to be 
four claws to each foot. The body is quite soft, and when 
handled, a yellowish fluid, of a disagreeable smell, comes out 
of the joints. These beetles are timid insects, and when 
alarmed they draw up their legs and feign themselves dead. 
Nearly all of them have the power of raising blisters when 
applied to the skin, and they retain it even when dead and 
perfectly dry. It is chiefly this property that renders them 
valuable to physicians. Four of our native Cantharides have 
been thus successfully employed, and are found to be as pow- 
erful in their effects as the imported species. For further 
particulars relative to their use, the reader is referred to my 
account of them published in 1824, in the first volume of 
“ The Boston Journal of Philosophy and the Arts,” and in 
the thirteenth volume of “ The New England Medical and 
Surgical Journal.” 
Occasionally potato-vines are veiy much infested by two 
or three kinds of Cantharides, swarms of which attack and 
destroy the leaves during midsummer. One of these kinds 
has thereby obtained the name of the potato-fly. It is the 
Cantharis vittata* or striped Cantliaris. It is of a dull 
tawny yellow or light yellowish-red color above, with two 
* Lyttn vittata , Fabricius. 1 # 
[ 10 The name Lytta is now adopted by most entomologists in preference to that 
of Cantliaris for these insects. — Lec.] 
