100 
THE ORDER. OF COLEOPTERA. 
Tribe XIX. 
TETRAMEROUS PLANT-BEETLES. 
TTerbivora tetramera. PhytophagA, Kirby. 
This tribe embraces an extensive series of beetles, mostly of small 
size, not averaging much above a quarter of an inch in length, and 
rarely exceeding half an inch, and usually adorned with beautiful and 
often variegated colots. Like most other beetles of the tetramerous 
section, the tarsi are clothed with a brush of hairs beneath, and the 
third, or last joint but one, is usually more or less deeply bilobed. They 
are distinguished from the snout-beetles in the same section, by the ab- 
sence of a rostrum or beak; from the short-horned borers, by their 
strongly dilated and bilobed tarsi, and from both by the antenme not 
being knobbed at the end. They differ from the other family of tetra- 
merous beetles — the long-horned wood-borers — in the comparative short- 
ness of their bodies and of all their members, especially the antennae, 
which are never tapering as they are in most of the Gerambycidse, but 
are either filiform or slightly and gradually enlarged towards the tip. 
Some of the Cerambycidie, however, have filiform antennae, and there 
seems to be no character by which these two tribes can be absolutely 
distinguished from each other; and the genus Donacia occupies so in- 
termediate a position between them that it has been placed sometimes 
in one, and sometimes in the other. But notwithstanding their close 
approach in a few of the connecting genera, scarcely any families of 
beetles are ordinarily more easily distinguished by their general form 
and aspect. The insects of the present tribe are pre eminently phyto- 
phagous or plant-eating in their habits, both in the larva and imago 
states. The only beetles which can be compared with them in this re- 
spect are the chafers or leaf-eating Laraellicorus in the pentamerous 
section. We have had occasion, in the introductory part of this work, 
to state some of the differences in the habits of these two plant-eating 
tribes. 
The Lamellicorns are, for the most part, much larger insects. They 
feed mostly upon the foliage of trees, in the beetle form, whilst their 
larvae live under ground upon the roots of grasses and other plants ; and 
they feed in the evening, clinging to the leaves by means of their long, 
sharp claws. 
The tetramerous plant-beetles, on the contrary, are comparatively 
small insects ; they feed mostly upon herbaceous plants, both in the 
larva and beetle state ; they are diurnal in their habits, and move slowly 
over the surface of plants, to which they adhere by means of the dense 
brush of hairs on the under side of their feet. 
