BY C. J. GAHAN. 
68 
adapted for biting or cutting, but, inserted near the middle 
line of the head, are curved downwards and outwards like 
a pair of tusks, of not very hard texture, which seem as if 
they could be used only for piercing soft tissues ; and they 
do not appear to be perforated with a canal like the 
nipping jaws of the larvae of the Lampyridae or glow¬ 
worms. The jaws are altogether constructed like those 
of the larvae of Lycidae, a family of beetles which usually 
display tawny orange or reddish colours, more or less 
varied with black. In the structure of the ventral side 
of the first thoracic segment, as seen in fig. 2, these 
remarkable larvae agree also with the known larvae of 
Lycidae. And it is highly probable that Westwood, Kolbe 
and Bourgeois were right in referring them to the latter 
family. 
But they were wrong, I think, in suggesting that they 
belonged to the genus Lycus . The large and flattened-out 
form of the larvae was probably the chief reason for that 
suggestion, the species of the genus Lycus being the 
largest of the family, and provided with large expanded 
wing-cases. A large size in the larva does not necessarily 
mean a correspondingly large size in the beetle into which 
it develops. Many species of beetle are surprisingly small 
as compared with the size of the larvae from which they 
come. Moreover, the larvae of two species of Lycus , one 
from Ceylon and one from Borneo, are known, and are so 
very unlike the creatures we have been discussing, that 
the latter could hardly belong to any other species of the 
same genus. If these larvae ever do change into beetles of 
the ordinary type, it must, I think, be into beetles of some 
other genus than Lycus, and what that other genus may 
be is one of the things we wish to find out. This may be 
done by someone who succeeds in keeping the larvae alive 
sufficiently long to undergo their transformation into 
beetles. Efforts in that direction have so far failed, but 
it is important that they should be continued. 
But there may be another solution to the problem. The 
female glowworm and the females of certain other beetles 
have a form very like that of their larvae, and never de¬ 
velop wings or elytra; they can, however, be distinguished 
from their larvae by the structure of their antennae and 
legs, with their greater number of joints, and by the 
possession of compound instead of simple eyes. There 
is, however, one group of beetles, the Phengodini, in which 
the female continues always to have the external form and 
