PLANT-LOUSE BEETLES. 
183 
three-jointed tarsi, and the broad hatchet-shaped terminal joint of the 
maxillary palpi, are their most distinctive organic characters. The tar- 
sal joints are always dilated and cushioned beneath, and the second 
joint is deeply bilobed. 
These insects seem to be specially appropriated to keeping in check 
the extensive families of plant-lice, both the leaf-lice {Aphides), and the 
bark-lice ( Coccides ), upon which they feed voraciously, in both the imago 
and the larva states ; and they are also known to devour the eggs of 
other insects. Mr. Westwood refers to some observations which go to 
show that they must sometimes subsist upon vegetable food, and I have 
seen the Coccinella 15-punctata, Oliv., with its head deeply immersed in 
a ripe raspberry, implying that they sometimes feed upon the juices of 
ripe and succulent fruits; but such cases are rare and exceptional to 
their general habits. It is not uncommon to find branches of trees 
thickly covered with the scales of bark-lice, almost every one of which 
has been torn open and its occupant destroyed by these predaceous in- 
sects. 
The larvae are oblong, blackish grubs, and are usually thickly beset 
with spines, which are also furnished with smaller spines or prickles, 
giving them, when magnified, a formidable appearance. These, as is 
the case with other larvae, are much more voracious than the perfect in- 
sects. When about to pupate they suspend themselves by the tail to a 
leaf or branch, and either push the larval skin upwards, where it re- 
mains shrivelled about the point of attachment, or remain within it till 
they emerge in the beetle form, when it bursts open upon the back and 
permits the enclosed insect to escape. This tribe of beetles is composed 
of the single family of Ooccinellidae. 
Family LXIV. COCCINELLIILE. 
As this family is co-extensive with the tribe to which it belongs, we 
have only, in treating of it, to refer back to the remarks already made. 
In a systematic point of view the (Joccinellidaj occupy 
a remarkably anomalous and isolated position, in con- 
sequence of the apparent heterogeneousuess of their 
organic characters. Whilst having the rounded form 
of the plant-beetles, the clavate antennae of the scav- 
engers, and the dilated palpi of the fungus-beetles, 
they agree in food and habits with none of these, but 
resemble, in their predaceous habits, the pentamerous 
ground-beetles, and the soft-winged carnivora, all of 
^\Treu"4FE which have their bodies more or less elongated, their 
Westwood. antennai filiform, and their palpi slendfer or but mode- 
rately dilated. Moreover, the reduction in the number of their tarsal 
[ Fig. 93. J 
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