LAND SCAVENGER-BEETLES. 
01 
linen and cotton fabrics. They are sometimes quite injurious to carpets 
whilst lying upon the floor. We have known them to select a particu- 
lar stripe, especially one of red flannel, in the domestic fabric known 
as rag-carpet, and follow it out into the middle of the room, gnawing it 
off at intervals. They have to be treated upon general principles, no 
specific remedy, we believe, having been discovered. Some very small 
species, belonging to the genus Anthrenus, are very destructive to cab- 
inets of natural history. Other small species are found on flowers. 
Family XII. MYCETOPHAGIDiE. 
lEig. 34.) 
1113 
Founded upon the genus Mycetophagns, a word which means a mush- 
room-eater, and therefore indicates the habits of the family. They are 
small, or very small, oval, moderately convex, 
pubescent, and usually prettily marked in- 
sects. This is one of the families of small 
Coleopterous insects in which the number of 
tarsal joints is very variable, not unfrequently 
differing in the sexes of the same species. 
The only preceding family with which it is 
liable to be confounded, is that of the Nitidu- 
first, in the antennae, which are knobbed in Nitidu- 
lidae, and usually gradually clavate in the Mycetophagidae ; second, in 
the elytra, which cover the whole abdomen in the latter, and are almost 
always truncated, though often but very slightly in the former ; and 
thirdly, in the character of the pubescence or down upon the surface, 
which is scarcely perceptible or wanting in the former, whereas the 
Mycetophagidai are densely clothed with prostrate hairs. They are 
also more uniformly and conspicuously spotted than the Mtidulkhc, the 
elytra usually exhibiting yellow spots or bauds on a brown or blackish 
ground. 
Mvcetoi’Iiagus:— 1, beetle; 
tenua; 3, anterior tar 
male (?) ; 4, same of female (?) 
5. posterior tarsus— after West- 
wood. 
lid® ; but it differs 
Our largest species is the M. punctatns , Say, upwards of two-teutlis 
of an inch in length, blackish ; elytra reddish-yellow, with a large black 
spot including the scutellum, another at the side, and another near but 
not including the tip. 
M. flexuosus, Say, is three-twentieths of an inch in length, blackish; 
elytra redish- yellow ; a large transverse black spot on the region of the 
scutellum ; a small rounded one on the shoulder; a large irregular one 
on the side, sometimes extending to the suture, and a large black spot 
on the tip, enclosing a small fulvous spot. 
About twenty N. A. species are known. 
